Walmart is known as one of the world’s largest retailers. This being said, one would assume anything that goes onto their website has been viewed by numerous worker’s to ensure the website is working and advertising successfully. But recently a customer stumbled upon a page on the retailer’s website that proves Walmart’s system may not be working:
On October 21 Kristyn Washburn tweeted, “@Walmart Not sure labeling these as ‘Fat Girl Costumes’ is the best approach,” and included a screenshot of the website page and a link to it. The phrase ‘fat girl’ was included within the URL. After someone brought this to the retailer’s attention, one would also assume the company would respond quickly to this terrible categorization and maybe even issue an apology ASAP. But instead, this was the response:
This ‘Fat Girl Costumes’ section on the website soon went viral. People continued to tweet Walmart and since then, Walmart has removed the description and called it unacceptable. In a statement to WNEW radio in Washington, D.C., the retailer said: “This never should have been on our site. It is unacceptable, and we apologize. We worked quickly to remove it this morning and are taking additional steps to ensure this never happens again.” Walmart then spent their time issuing apologies to indivuals on Twitter:
There is still no indication as to who is responsible for the offensive title. It could possibly be a web developer with a wicked sense of humor. But one thing we can all agree on is calling a woman, a body type, or a certain clothes size “fat” is unacceptable. We can only hope this helps further support the fact we as women will not stand for being degraded to an image title such as ‘fat’ and an incident like this should not occur in the future.