You might remember the other week how Peloton’s Christmas advert sparked a huge backlash because the advert supposedly made it seem as though a husband bought his wife an exercise bike because he was forcing her to lose weight.

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Here’s the ad if you haven’t seen it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pShKu2icEYw&feature=emb_logo

We covered the abuse that Peloton received here, but you can imagine the sort of things the outrage brigade were saying – that the advert is sexist, misogynist, and all the things that make companies poop their pants.

Peloton haven’t issued an apology and have left their advert online, probably because they don’t believe they’ve done anything wrong. In fact according to Philip DeFranco, Peloton’s stock has gone up 5% since the outrage began.

The actress who starred in the advert – Monica Ruiz – has spoken out though, and she’s taking all the blame for the backlash because she thinks it’s her now famous facial expression in the advert that caused it.

Via WGN:

The Peloton wife has spoken, and from now on, she’d like to be known as anything but the star of the ad that exploded the internet’s collective brains.

The ad, which showed Ruiz tirelessly vlogging a year’s worth of Peloton workouts after her husband gifted her the stationary bike, was called sexist, tone-deaf and alarming, to name a few.

“Honestly, I think it was just my face. It was my fault,” she said. “My eyebrows look, like, worried?”

“I hope that people can just see me as an actress,” she said. “That’s what I am. I hope people can remember that I’m not actually the Peloton lady and let me work other jobs.

Poor lady. TBH the commercial was lame and cringey so fair enough if people didn’t like it, but it seems like they didn’t like it for all the wrong reasons. Now Monica Ruiz has to remind people that she’s “not actually the Peloton lady” because everyone’s giving her abuse for taking on a job with this commercial.

For Peloton itself though, their sales since the advert was released prove that any publicity is good publicity. Well, maybe not always.