【Boobwatch 1 (1996)】

A sexy handmaid Halloween costume already exists,Boobwatch 1 (1996) so should this really be surprising?

On Thursday, photography company Van Daele & Russell posted a wedding photo to Facebook of a newly married couple posing in Cambridge, Ontario, where The Handmaid's Taleis filmed. Flanked by people in handmaid costumes, they stood in front of the "hanging wall," which is used by the show's fascist government to display the bodies of executed citizens. Dark!

It is unclear why this couple wanted to take a photo against a backdrop that brings to mind state-sponsored rape and murder. It's a pretty disturbing visual no matter what, though, and people on Facebook — and Twitter, once it made its way over there — were quick to comment.

"Wow, this is deeply disturbing," one Facebook commenter wrote. "I love the show, but this photo is truly puke-worthy."

"Did anyone involved watch the series or read the book?" said another.

The studio, for its part, has been responding to each negative comment on Facebook with the same long, long paragraph, which appears to be mostly chiding haters for being freaked out by the murder wall picture instead of participating in meaningful activism. (You can read it in full here.) It's really a master class in Posting Through It.

Dressing in the red capes and white bonnets of The Handmaid's Tale has become the viral way (again, dark!) to protest rollbacks of reproductive freedoms in the United States — even though the metaphor doesn't quite track.

It seems that whatever metaphor was supposed to be happening here didn't work either. Why don't we all just make our weddings look like The Masked Singerinstead?

UPDATE: Oct. 3, 2019, 3:37 p.m. EDT Van Daele & Russell has removed the original Facebook post.