The Media Blog: People blaming Kendall for that Pepsi ad are either being silly or simply don’t get it

Kendall Jenner is not the problem with that Pepsi ad. Not her as a human being, not the fact she’s a Jenner (or related to the Kardashians,) not the fact that she’s ‘privileged’ and certainly not the fact she’s white.

Let’s try a little experiment, shall we? Imagine Kendall’s role in the ad were played by a black woman. So instead of Kendall, we see, a Lupita Nyong’O, perhaps, walk up to white policemen and hand them a can or bottle of Pepsi. Would that have been better? We’d likely all have had an even worse reaction to the image of a black woman trying to placate a white man with a chilled sugar water beverage.

Same thing goes for if the ad featured someone with less money than Kendall Jenner in real life. It only makes things worse. In a way, Kendall is really the best person they could have used. It’s a disaster, of course, but the ad is so fundamentally flawed that it would have been a disaster anyway.

[Read also: Remember the time a Pepsi advertisement ruined Michael Jackson’s life? (WATCH)]

The problem with the ad is not the person in it, it’s the ad itself. Brands co-opting social, political and cultural movements for profit is nothing new. However, an ad that so brazenly hearkens back to real life moments from physical protest is inexcusable. Suggesting that the tensions behind such protests can be diffused by simply handing someone a Pepsi, and/or drinking it, is so ridiculous one wonders what everyone involved must have been thinking.

The worst thing that can be said about Kendall is that she should have known better, but then so should the hundreds of other people involved in the campaign who believed they were doing a good thing.

[Read also: Pope John Paul II was so mad at Madonna’s Pepsi advert that he banned her from The Vatican (WATCH)

Of course Pepsi has apologized now, even taking responsibility for the backlash Kendall has suffered as an individual. But let’s face it, we won’t be forgetting this in a long time.

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