The Angry Reaction To That Peloton Commercial Is Telling Us Something Important
By now, nearly everyone’s heard about the Peloton commercial that has unexpectedly ruffled a lot of feathers. It’s the one that shows the attractive young woman reviewing her “year-of-Peloton” with her male partner, who gave her the stationary bike a year ago as a Christmas gift.
Articles and posts on social media going on about this ad are almost too many to count. And they point to things — expressed and implied — that people find offensive:
- It’s body-shaming in that he’s decided she needs to work out.
- It’s sexist and presumptuous in that he’s decided to give her something he thinks she needs rather than something she really wants.
- It’s elitist and privileged because the bike costs over $2,000 and is shown set up in a beautiful room, all well out of reach for most viewers.
- It’s demeaning because she’s terrified she might not be “up to the task” of using the bike.
You can easily understand some annoyance and even disapproval directed at the ad agency’s creative team. But what would account for the almost unprecedented outpouring of visceral negative reaction against the product and the company that makes it and everyone associated with it? (The actor who plays the “husband” is even worried the blowback will hurt both his acting career and his reputation with the kids he teaches in school!)
Something more powerful and more universal is lurking behind this wave of objections.
Surely, there are plenty of commercials showing expensive gifts, and nobody raises a fuss. For example, virtually every commercial for jewelry is dramatized in the context of a gift. Nobody’s offended because it is always made clear that the intention of the giver is to express love and affection, and that the recipient gets that message loud and clear. (A cynic could argue that these images imply the giver’s expectation of reciprocal expression of affection, but you never hear anyone complaining about that, on social media or anywhere else.)
And there are loads of commercials about personal improvement products and nobody blinks. We’re bombarded with commercials for personal care products, vacuums and other home appliances, pharmaceuticals and even other exercise machines, where the people who use them are so happy with the results that they start dancing wildly. Nobody objects to those images. But notice you don’t see any gift-givers in these commercials, presiding over (and taking credit for) the good results of using the product.
It seems to be the combustible combination of:
- The gift,
- Of a personal improvement product
- In the context of a close relationship
that touched a communal nerve and sparked a wide-spread outcry. It’s in this arena that viewers’ antennae are on high alert for motivations and state of mind of both the giver and the recipient. We know it’s just a dramatization, but we see real people — not cartoon characters, or geckos or emus — and we care what they intend and feel. We worry about what this little playlet says about people like us.
For all its time-honored status as a socially accepted and encouraged practice, gift-giving is hazardous territory. We’re always looking for signs and clues about “how things are going” in a relationship. And the giving of gifts is a ritual that is packed with meaning on both sides. The recipient wants to know why a particular gift was chosen and what message is intended in its giving. And the giver is equally concerned about the sentiment telegraphed by the recipient’s reaction.
The angry responses to the Peloton commercial — and the consequent loss of over $1 billion of value of the company stock — are telling us something important:
People sense there are some not-so-nice dynamics in the relationship presented in that little drama, and they’re troubled by it.
Stated simply, they just don’t want these things to be true — in the real world or even in a made-up TV commercial.