The Handmaid’s Tale is, without question, one of the darkest and most brutal shows to ever grace our televisions.

Based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same name, the show (in which Elisabeth Moss plays titular ‘handmaid’, Offred) takes place in Gilead, a near-future version of North America in which the Constitution has been overthrown. As a result of this, women’s rights and identities have been stripped away, with fertile women being rounded up, red tagged, and forced into a life of sexual servitude and surrogacy. They are held down by their mistresses each month and raped by their ‘Commanders’. They are tortured, physically and emotionally. They see parts of their bodies cut away from them if they ever break the rules – even if the rule is something as simple as, say, speaking out of turn.

Worse still? The show is based on real-life events – because, as Atwood has pointed out time and time again, every aspect of Gilead’s culture has really happened at some point in history, somewhere in the world.

“When it first came out it was viewed as being far-fetched,” she said recently. “However, when I wrote it I was making sure I wasn’t putting anything into it that humans had not already done somewhere at some time.”

What a truly horrifying thought, eh? With that in mind, it makes complete sense that a fancy dress company decided to take all of that as inspiration for a “sexy” Halloween costume.

Check it out:

This “sexy” Handmaid’s Tale costume has sparked fury on social media