Wal-Mart's in hot water over 'Fat Girl Costumes' section on website
Posted: October 27, 2014 - 2:47pm

A look at Wal-Mart's website on Monday, via AdWeek.
Wal-Mart is apologizing for a section of its website selling "Fat Girl Costumes" for Halloween. The world's largest retailer has edited the site to remove the references, but they were still there as of Monday morning, several websites, including Jezebel, BuzzFeed and AdWeek, were reporting. (You can see it by clicking on the picture in the upper right-hand corner.) A company spokesman addressed the gaffe with BuzzFeed: "We first heard about it this morning -- our teams immediately engaged, we're working to remove it as soon as possible and make sure it never happens again," Wal-Mart spokesman Ravi Jariwala told BuzzFeed News. "This never should have been on our site. It is unacceptable, and we apologize," Jariwala said. Jezebel was apparently first to report the story, after it received a tip from a reader who stumbled upon the section while searching for a Halloween costume. "It features a lot of the same outfits as the Women's Plus Size Adult section, which makes us think some web developer created the section as a "hilarious" joke and then neglected to change it," Jezebel wrote. The story spread quickly, as web publications put Wal-Mart in their cross-hairs. Industry trade publication AdWeek featured this headline: "Whoa, Walmart.com. Why Do You Have a Section Called 'Fat Girl Costumes'? Not a good look for the retailer." AdWeek offered a different possible explanation, noting that there were several other related categories, such as "Plus Size Halloween Costumes" and "Adult Plus Halloween," and speculating that the titles were automatically generated from some of the descriptive data supplied by low-budget suppliers.