Ready for the ultimate Halloween costume?
Here it is: "Anna Rexia," a chance for the everywoman to dress like a “slut” with an eating disorder. The designers are stuffing a busty babe into a skeleton costume. Now that’s about as ironic as resurrecting the Bionic Woman, super strong but the size of a sapling. (And a gothic to boot).
I’m guessing this is about the ultimate fantasy, having it both ways, semi-starved and strong, skeletal and busty. To wit, Miss “Anna Rexia” is available in a plus size, offering curvier women the chance to dress-up as our current runway model ideal.
I'd say the costume is so over the top, it’s doing us a favor. Unlike the new Bionic Woman, who looks relatively normal-sized (for TV celebrities that is) and was created by TV writers to seduce us with dark themes of killing and maiming, "Anna Rexia" makes us realize the silliness of our mixed cultural ideals. No one woman can be meet them all, unless of course she’s half robot or pretend. Halloween with its skeletons, witches, and ghosts does glorify the mentally afflicted. And so does our contemporary blurring of science fiction and reality. What's next? Bionorexia? Bustorexia? Let’s keep this Halloween theme to one day, please.
Anorexia is ghoulish disease, worthy only of compassion not worship.