Kendall Jenner responds to criticism over controversial Pepsi ad: 'It feels like my life is over'

Roughly five months ago, model Kendall Jenner was seen in a Pepsi ad where she and others participated in a faux-protest for equality, and against police brutality. In it, she could be seen offering a can of soda to a policeman, in order to win him over, and for this she received flak for being tone-deaf and commodifying and trivialising the Black Lives Matter movement. [caption id=“attachment_3368646” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Kendall Jenner in a still from the ad. Youtube screengrab[/caption] Literally everyone, from Martin Luther King Jr’s daughter to several media publications, and of course Twitter, spoke out about and against it — all except Jenner herself. But, she seems to have finally responded to all the criticism. In a trailer for the 14th season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, a show which chronicles the day-to-day lives of the Kardashain-Jenner family, she can be seen saying, “It feels like my life is over.” Trust this family to make everything about themselves. Perhaps she will have more to say in the full episode. However, sister Kim Kardashian did not sugarcoat her response at all, and told Jenner outright that she had made a mistake. Even in previous press interactions, Kardashian has gone on the record to say, “She [Kendall Jenner] totally understood at the end of the day and she felt really awful for it. She just wants to move on from it,” as though the decision to star in the ad was some sort of juvenile, harmless mistake. What critics found problematic about the ad was its similarity to one of the most iconic images from the Baton Rouge protest, which was held to mark the deaths of two African Americans at the hands of the police. The ad reduced the significance of protests to the exchange of a can of soda and made it seem as though racial discrimination and violence can be ended through something this trivial. Pepsi went on to delete the ad and apologise for it. “Pepsi was trying to project a global a message of unity, peace, and understanding. Clearly, we missed the mark, and we apologise. We did not intend to make light of any serious issue. We are pulling the content and halting any further rollout. We also apologise for putting Kendall Jenner in this position,” read a statement.