Okay, we’ll disagree on this one. It looked to me like she actually wanted the gift.
Although I admit her expression did look a little creepy in a Black-Hole-Sun kind of way.
a lot of people would think it’s sexist to tell one’s wife to vacuum better regardless of the details
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A lot people also seem to intentionally miss the point because they mistook valid criticism of the commercial as some kind of negative criticism of them, personally.
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Just to put it into context, I do the vacuuming and change all the HEPA filters in our house while she’s out. If I have to leave for work for a week, then she’s dealing with two girls who are as stubborn and annoying as myself and she has to clean. Anything I can do to make my love’s life easier is my goal.
<—Not buying a Peloton anytime soon, but not because I’m offended by an ad; it just seems like Sharper Image garbage that will fill the landfills less than a decade from now.
I mean, I could get it that some people might not see it the first time they see the ad. A lot of people aren’t great at picking up nonverbal communication and subtext.
But after being told it’s creepy, why, and what to look for, I really don’t get how anyone can NOT see the creepiness.
Maybe it helped that the first time I watched it, I muted the audio. By the end I was sure it was either a promo for a Netflix horror show or it was produced by The Onion.
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This, I think, is why some people hate spoilers.
We’re all free to interpret partial information according to our preconceived notions and biases. In my case I’m prepared to go out on a limb and suggest that either of your two back story suggestions is vastly more likely than domestic-violence-slice-of-life. Vastly more likely.
I’m not super keen on exercising, regardless of the time of day. Especially at the start of a new regime. It takes a while for exercising to become a habit, and developing that habit can be gruelling, with far more mind than muscle required. Being fit is great. Getting fit sucks. That’s what I saw in the “ugh, 6 am” scene.
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You can definitely see the creepiness–it’s coming from the people creating contextual analysis by projecting their own imaginations, insecurities, and stories onto a character in a thirty-second commercial for an exercise bike while simultaneously helping promote a product they believe is being advertised with a crime against humanity.
Cool. So we can sign you up for the “not even enough empathy to identify with a hostage” cohort. Thanks for filling out the survey! 
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I think it would be great if:
- People who don’t see this commercial as creepy would avoid characterizing people who do see it as creepy as being disingenuous moral panic mongers
- People who do see this commercial as creepy would avoid characterizing people who don’t see it as creepy as being zero empathy sociopaths
Different people see things different ways. When very large number of people see things in a certain way that probably means it’s not a fringe position based on a hallucination-laden psychotic break.
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Yes, yes… us women have just imagined all those centuries of discrimination that continues to today… our bad…
They will not…
How do we characterize people who refuse to see women as credibly in defining our own oppression?
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Oh, natural language isn’t doing me any favours as I try to talk about this.
I’m distinguishing two groups: people who felt the commercial was creepy when they saw it (C) and people who did not feel it was creepy (NC) when they saw. Then I’m expressing my unhappiness at a subgroup of C who seem to think that there is something wrong with people in NC (CJ - but see below on this) and a subgroup of NC who seem to think there is something wrong with people in C (NCJ).
So when you ask me about characterizing people who refuse to see women as credible in defining their own oppression, I feel like you are talking about people I was implicitly criticizing. A person in NC like @xkonk who came specifically to understand why the commercial creeped people out and then thanked others for their explanations is not in NCJ and is not denying women’s ability to define their oppression. So my “moral panic mongers” seem to be the ones who are doing the denying.
That said I reread the discussion and when I keep all the threads separate, I don’t really see any CJ. The absolute worst expressed to anyone in NC (but not in NCJ) by people in C is a little (remarkably cordial) exasperation. The “Holy crap what’s wrong with you” stuff (which I contributed to) is all directed at people in NCJ. Basically, CJ doesn’t exist, so I shouldn’t be calling it out.
I saw people being judgmental of other people because of how they saw a commercial and called that out. What I failed to distinguish before I reread the thread in response to your comment was that it wasn’t [people] being judgmental of other [people] but rather it was [people denying sexism] being judgmental of [people who point out sexism]. Some bad both-sides-ism on my part.
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You can definitely sign me up for some mild CJ-ism in my post above. Though, in my defense, I’m not so much judging them as being bad people but recognizing that people don’t clue into the same things as being creepy.
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