Here’s this superdupermodel, Kendall Jenner, with fantastic bloodlines. Like, she’s the daughter of Bruce-now-Caitlyn Jenner? The sexy lady who won the gold medal in the 1976 Men’s Decathlon, and was on the cover of Vanity Fair in a white bathing suit? And through Caitlyn’s second wife, she’s half-sister to the reality TV celebrities Kourtney, Kim, Khloe, and Rob Kardashian. You can’t get more famous than that.
But Kendall is not just another gorgeous face. No way. Like, she created two signature nail laquers for the Kardashian Kolors nail polish line. Plus, she’s a photographer—her very first venture was snapping pictures of Kaia Gerber, the daughter of Cindy Crawford, for the sixteenth edition of Love. And she and her sister Kylie created the novel Rebels: City of Indra with their ghostwriter Maya Sloan. All this in addition to runway modeling. Total multitasking.
So when Pepsi offered her a gig for fat stacks, what was she going to do, turn them down? Come on, be real.
Anyway the commercial, titled “Live for Now Moments Anthem,” looked awesome. There’s this street demonstration with, you know, demonstrators? On the street? Holding signs like “Join the Conversation”? So Kendall is on a modeling shoot, but when she sees the muilticultural people, all of them rocking color-coordinated wardrobes, she doesn’t just stand there and watch. She pulls off her blonde wig, joins them, grabs a Pepsi, and offers it to a frowning officer. And everyone beams—including the cop. And as the crowd high-fives each other, the screen reads, “Live bolder. Live louder. Live for now.” What’s wrong with that?
Well, you would have thought Kim Jong whatshisface had dropped the big one on Oregon. Hours after the commercial aired, there was a Twitterstorm. Make that a Twittertsunami. PC City. The progressives claimed that the ad coopted the anti-Trump “resistance” and that it belittled Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street and just about every other social protest.
Some people said that the ad reminded them of the time three years ago in Baton Rouge, when Leisha Evans, a dignified African-American nurse and mother, was photographed in a long dress facing down policemen in riot gear. And Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King, wrote sarcastically, “If only Daddy had known about the power of Pepsi.”
Well, you know the rest. A few hours later, Pepsi pulled the commercial and sent out a guilty plea: “Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding,” the company said in a statement posted on their website. “Clearly we missed the mark, and we apologize. We did not intend to make light of any serious issue. . . . We also apologize for putting Kendall Jenner in this position.”
A lot of good that’ll do Kendall!
Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images