A holiday season advertisement for Peloton earned so much social media ire that it tanked the luxury stationary bike company’s stock by nearly 10%, knocking almost $1 billion from the brand’s value.
There are lots of reasons to deride Peloton. For starters, markets wildly overvalued its IPO, following the trend of utterly ordinary businesses like WeWork successfully duping investors into thinking they’re extraordinary until it’s too late. Stationary bikes, in general, provide a highly inefficient workout (with the potential to damage the genitals to boot), and overpriced brands like Peloton (bikes start at $2,245 plus at least $13 a month for membership) promulgate the myth that fitness requires vast riches.
But despite out-sized outrage, the viral Peloton ad is fine, and anyone arguing otherwise is ignoring the realities of fitness advertising in a world that’s deemed the very notion of fitness “fatphobic.”
this ad is making me lose my goddamn mind pic.twitter.com/GXgypRkFOg
— Sam (@SamuelMoen) December 1, 2019
The concept of the ad is simple enough. A husband gifts his wife one of Peloton’s signature stationary bikes for Christmas, and she spends the next year documenting her use of the bike. The acting is a little overwrought — she calls herself “nervous” to use a bike that is just sitting in her living room, and her self-made cellphone video documentary is a bit much — but that’s not what has people up in arms.
Instead, the central point of contention is that the husband got exercise equipment for his wife as a gift and that the wife in question is already thin and seemingly remains the same weight throughout the ad.
First, we have to acknowledge the obvious: If Peloton had used a woman a single pound over an 18.5 BMI, they would have been raked over the coals by wokescolds for encouraging fat-shaming. By having the woman’s progress not include any semblance of weight change, Peloton cleverly billed their bike as a means to advance personal cardiac health and overall wellness.
Furthermore, Peloton has to sell its products as holiday gifts. Wives gift their husbands dumbbells and squat racks all the time. I’d prefer a treadmill over a Peloton, but what difference does gender make?
There’s an obvious answer to that question as well: Society has overcorrected one sexist standard of the past with another that now acts as though spouses aren’t allowed to hold each other’s health and fitness to account.
Seeing as the woman in the ad was already slim, it would be insane if he got her the Peloton to lose 20 pounds rather than for stress management or cardio. After all, seeing as men actually prefer women a little heavier than women’s own unrealistic ideals, it’s fully possible that the woman actually asked for the bike for Christmas. But if you’re letting yourself go to the extent that it’s unhealthy, there are crueler ways to inform your spouse that they should probably rectify it that than giving them an expensive stationary bike.
About 70% of men and 60% of women are either overweight or obese, in no small part due to the disturbing fact that fewer than 5% of adults engage in physical activity (including activities as low-effort as walking) for at least 30 minutes per day. An overly eager husband may be a nuisance and an entitled one downright rude, but the obesity crisis is fatal. We’d be better off getting outraged over an epidemic that’s killing half the country rather than getting mad over one slightly off-kilter ad that attempted to sell fitness in an era that renders good health all but impossible.
