3-Year-Old Amputee Dons Halloween Costumes That Celebrate Her Uniqueness

A 3-year-old amputee who loves Halloween wears costumes that celebrate the fact she’s different.

Scarlette Tipton, of California, was born with a rare soft-tissue cancer on her left side and after undergoing five rounds of chemotherapy, doctors said they needed to amputate her arm for her to survive. She had her left arm amputated at 10 months old.

“She really loved Halloween so we wanted to do something extra fun for her so she would have a confidence about her, that even though she’s different she can participate and have fun,” Simone Tipton, Scarlette’s mother, told InsideEdition.com. 

The 3-year-old has previously been a doll with cotton coming out of her left sleeve to make it look like her arm was ripped off, Tipton said.

Last year, Scarlette was a skeleton and carried around a plastic skeleton arm with her costume.

“She picked out the skeleton costume and I decided to do the arm with it,” Tipton said. “When she had her skeleton arm she kept leaving it places and yelling, ‘Where is my other arm?’ But she was actually serious. People thought it was really funny.”

This year, she’ll dress up as a one-winged, dead raven.

“When people ask her where her other arm is, she says when she has two arms, she’s sick and when she has one arm, she is not sick. She fully embraces it. She knows if she had two arms she wouldn’t be healthy,” Tipton said. “She loves dressing up and begs me to put on her costume.”

Future costume ideas include a zombie and a shark attack victim.