Betsy Abel of Minneapolis, Minnesota, was innocently browsing Amazon last month for a new pair of leggings when she stumbled upon a pair that made her blood boil with anger.
Why the outrage? It had to do with the picture the company decided to use to sell the product.
The plus-size leggings by Arrive Guide depicted a thin model standing in one of the legs.
"Here's one for today's 'Are You Freaking Kidding Me' file," Abel, 44, wrote in a Facebook post on May 19. “Talk about disrespectful and being in poor taste.” The photo started to pick up steam after Yahoo Style reported on it earlier this week.
The image was also used by "several third-party sellers" on the site, Abel told TODAY Style, though the particular seller that initially caught her eye appears to have taken down the photo (it can still be found here). These independent sellers use Amazon's marketplace to reach customers, and it isn't clear who is responsible for the original photo. We reached out to Amazon for comment, and to contact the seller, but haven't yet heard back.
Abel, a fitness and wellness coach, pointed out that the image could make people who already feel bad about needing a larger pair feel even worse by showing that two trimmer women can fit in these.
“I work with women every day who face this sort of thing ... and it breaks my heart,” she told TODAY Style.
Besides the fact that the image can be seen as hurtful and offensive, it doesn’t even give customers a good idea of what the leggings actually look like on someone, basically defeating the purpose of a product shot in the first place.