The holiday season is underway. This means that businesses are advertising their latest and greatest products, in hopes of winning the money of a buyer. One business, though, unveiled an advertisement that had critics stirring.

Since the story “Exercising in Front of a Screen” was published on Nov. 11, the company “Peloton” has released a new holiday-themed advertisement: “The Gift That Gives Back”. This advertisement promoted their limited time deal of a free Christmas gift to come with the Peloton order. 

This advertisement featured a woman being gifted the exercise machine for Christmas from her husband. It then transitions to clips the woman recorded of herself using the machine. These videos are supposed to resemble her daily logs of usage to put into a video diary of her experience. The goal of the ad was to show the woman becoming healthier and more fit over the next year of exercise. Watchers later find out the video diary is a gift for her husband, one full year later.

Critics were quick to jump into their opinions, calling the ad sexist and dystopian. Many pointed out that the woman was already fit before she had even received the Peloton, so she being “a little nervous, but excited” made no sense. The ad resulted in a significant 9% drop in the companies stock market, reports CNN. 

The company has since began to recover from their crash and their stock prices have begun to rise again.