I Want A Peloton

I've totally been coveting a Peloton. I don't even know if I'd like it but everyone I know who has one seems to love it. Howard Stern has one and his admittedly ginormous (body weight) male staff have them too. Stern was talking about Peloton almost daily for awhile, even having one set up in his hotel when he recently went to Los Angeles to promote his book, Howard Stern Comes Again.

I just saw all the controversy about the new Peloton holiday commercial today and I can't believe all the outrage and overreaction. The commercial shows a "rail thin woman" (as called by news outlets and haters on Twitter) receiving one for Christmas from her husband. People went bananas. They said the commercial is sexist. It's anti-woman. Women interviewed on the street said they wouldn't be happy if their husband bought them a piece of exercise equipment. I think I saw something about the commercial being bad for women's body image.

Commercial here:

THIS IS CRAZY. Nowhere in the ad did anyone say anything about losing weight. I know people who run or lift weights just because it's a stress release. My husband, B, just started exercising again after like ten years of not doing it, because he just turned fifty and wants to be HEALTHY. I don't think he even has any weight to lose. If he loses any pounds, that will be a byproduct, but he isn't working out for that purpose.

I'm not skinny. I'm curvy. I hate exercise. Yet, I hate walk/jog on my treadmill just about six to seven days a week for around sixty to ninety minutes every time. I literally hate every minute. I fantasize about some form of exercise that would "change me" as the girl in the commercial said the Peloton did. I WANT TO LIKE EXERCISE.

The only sexist thing about the commercial is that I have to assume that they had the man give it to the woman because it's expensive. And men tend to have different mirrors than women, as the late, great Richard Jeni once said. No matter what he really looks like, he tends to think he looks much BETTER, whereas women are much harder on themselves.

If a guy is getting his wife a Peloton, chances are she ASKED for it. Or showed her longing as they passed by it in the mall. Our big mall has a Peloton store. I've walked by and looked at it longingly. But the bike is around twenty-two hundred dollars! I know I can't afford it. So if someone were to purchase one for me- my husband, Santa, whomever, I'd gladly take it.

I think people need to REEL IT IN. This isn't any old exercise bike. This is a pretty big investment. It's not the kind of thing you put together and it ends up used to hang clothes on. You buy the bike but you're also buying like a gym membership. There's a monthly fee for the classes or whatever. Don't quote me, but I'm pretty sure, unless you purchase the bike secondhand, you have to buy the membership. So again, this isn't my mom's stationary bike that collected dust in our basement.

Not to mention, SOME PEOPLE LIKE EXERCISE! Some of those people happen to be women, and some of them happen to be wives. People know if their husband is a dick, buying them a piece of exercise equipment to make some kind of dick statement on their weight. If B was somehow able to afford a Peloton, I would certainly not think he was being a dick.

People who are bothered are projecting their own issues on to this ad. Period. People just took it as the husband thinking his wife needs to lose weight. That wasn't even implied. It's not like she was fat when she started and by the years end it showed her as skinny from all her Peloton-ing. I saw a kid in that commercial. Maybe he thought she needed a stress release that wasn't "mommy wine culture". If it was a wine commercial and he'd bought her a case of wine, people would probably think that was funny.

We don't have to be offended by everything. Exercise isn't just about losing weight either. It's annoying that people immediately jumped to the notion that someone giving the gift of movement is doing so to send a message about weight. Exercise is also just about general health. Considering we have an obesity problem in this country, I don't think that giving a gift that someone will actually use to get healthier is automatically a bad thing.

This is a hate bandwagon. People seem to be easily brainwashed these days to jump on a hate train and be outraged about anything. It's like just wanting to fight for fight's sake. To have an issue just because. It's stupid. Personally, I'd rather see a wife get a Peloton in a commercial than a car. It's more realistic to me for someone to get a 3k Peloton versus a brand new Lexus. If you have a husband that gifting a Peloton from is a dick move, then just YOUR husband is a dick. Maybe you should kick him to the curb and keep the Peloton.