Updated: Kendall Jenner's protest Pepsi spot prompts online backlash
Updated April 5 @ 2PM
Model and Kardashian clan member Kendall Jenner's turn as a Pepsi-wielding protester has some on social media decrying the imagery as appropriation of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The "Live for Now Moments" video released Tuesday has Jenner in a platinum wig on a photo shoot when protesters amble by. She rips off her wig, smears away her lipstick and joins them, eventually handing an officer on the demonstration line a can of Pepsi. He gulps some down, and then grins as Jenner dances off with her new friends. The ad was pulled from Pepsi's YouTube page Wednesday afternoon.
Reaction on social media ranged from some saying the imagery was tone deaf, to it evoking a widely circulated photo of Black Lives Matter protester Leshia Evans last year in Louisiana. Evans was detained when she approached police at a demonstration in Baton Rouge.
Though Pepsi defended the ad in a statement published late Tuesday night, the cola maker removed it from its YouTube page Wednesday afternoon and issued an apology.
"This is a global ad that reflects people from different walks of life coming together in a spirit of harmony, and we think that's an important message to convey," the statement said.
"Wow, I just solved all the problems in the country by being rich and thin and white and pretty. What else should I do today?" pic.twitter.com/vZiAgrkmaF
— Olivia A. Cole (@RantingOwl) April 4, 2017
.@pepsi, I'm assuming you'll be using the money you make to support @ACLU, @PPact, #CampaignZero + other social change.
That's all I got.
— Brittany Packnett (@MsPackyetti) April 4, 2017
The new @pepsi ad with @KendallJenner is stupefyingly diabolical.
Absurd, PC-crazed, virtue-signalling, snowflake claptrap. pic.twitter.com/SA9RRanGNo
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) April 4, 2017
(To "Pepsi-Cola Hits the Spot")
Pepsi-Cola has a spot
Makes us angry, quite a lot
Puts the brand in a pickle, too
Pepsi-Cola how could you?
— Stuart Elliott (@stuartenyt) April 4, 2017