Well, this is a terrible idea.
Sleepwear company Lunya has decided to use “The Handmaid’s Tale” — a book and television show about sexual slavery — to help sell lingerie.
On Monday, the company announced that the red shade of one of its “washable silk” sets would be dubbed “Offred” after the protagonist in Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel and Elisabeth Moss’ character in the popular Hulu series.
“Praise be!” Lunya declares on Facebook and Instagram. “Meet our limited-edition silk set. Join the resistance just in time for #handmaidstale season 2.”
In the book and show, Offred is a woman who is kidnapped and forced to have sex with a married couple in order to produce a child for them. She wears red so that she is easily identifiable as someone’s property.
Her name also denotes that she is someone’s possession. Offred’s “Commander,” or male captor, is named Fred Waterford (portrayed in the show by Joseph Fiennes), and her new name literally means “of Fred.”
“The decision to name this color Offred was rooted in the color itself, being a kind of ‘off Red color,’ and our enthusiasm for the powerful nature of Elisabeth Moss’s character in the show and as a symbol of our solidarity with the Resistance,” Ashley Merrill, Lunya’s founder and CEO, told HuffPost in a statement.
In the book and show, Offred is part of the Resistance, an underground movement to overthrow the Republic of Gilead, the totalitarian society that enforces sexual slavery.
Merrill also noted in her statement that Lunya is a female-founded company and most of its employees are women.
“Our team is focused on supporting programs and bringing awareness to key issues such as education, opportunity and health for women,” she said.
Despite the good intentions, some people on Twitter couldn’t help but point out how odd the decision was.
We’ll just let Offred take it from here: