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Elise Farrell

Media representations: Kendall Jenner

Kendall Jenner is an American model/ reality star who comes from one of the most influential and successful families of the century, the Kardashian's. Due to her families rise of stardom, Jenner often finds herself as a subject to the media more often than most. As she is constantly in the eyes of the camera there are many infamous moments of hers that have sparked an immense level of attraction.

In 2017, the 21 year old was the star of Pepsi's "Live For now" advert. The advert was heavily influenced by the peace protests within the BlackLivesMatter movement. The advert shows Jenner being photographed as she is a model, as this is happening there is a peace protest occurring in front of her and she decides to participate. The ad ends as Kendall is seen handing a police officer a can of Pepsi, the crowd rejoices and celebrates as if the issue is solved and there is now peace gained. Majority of viewers where disgusted by this outlook stating that the BlackLivesMatter issue was being mocked and completely disrespected and illegitimised. Pepsi withdrew the advertisement from all their social media accounts, as well as this Jenner was seen in tears apologising on her family's television show "Keeping Up With The Kardashians" stating that "everybody makes mistakes" and the disrespect was completely unintentional. This did not prevent the ongoing backlash as many still found her willingness to take part in the ad is unforgivable and many heavily inspirational figures then began to speak up regarding the controversy. One of these figures was Bernice King (daughter of Martin Luther King Jr), she shared a tweet with the caption "If only daddy would have known about the power of #Pepsi and included an image of her father being detained by police. This statement proved Jenner's lack of regard and empathy towards many real life experiences and she still receives hateful comments about it years later.

Earlier this year in the second season of her family's new reality show "The Kardashians" this clip of Kendal Jenner cutting up a cucumber went 'viral' on social media as she appears to cut it in an extremely abnormal way. At first glance it seems like a clip that is more to be humoured, instead a substantial amount of viewers where honestly concerned with how "out of touch", "privileged" and "far removed from reality" a human being can be. The clip of this gained over 5 million views and was shared on multiple social media platforms all reacting to how difficult this simple task was for her to perform. The common vegetable seemed like an alien item to Kendall and this encouraged more and more comments from spectators. "Kendall Jenner trying to cut a f----- cucumber is the most tragic thing I've ever witnessed," a fan wrote in a tweet and this is one of thousands. Other examples of the 'hate' received are "it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s never sliced a vegetable in her life. Lol." and "It reminds me of those infomercials where the person struggling with the task is in black and white before they reveal the miracle product.". Jenner and her family members are often seen laughing off this moment but it had definitely left fans still concerned about how entitled her upbringing must have been for her to have never cut up a vegetable before.

Here Kendall Jenner is seen posing in the November issue of the 15th anniversary celebration of the Vogue Fashion Fund. She appears next to fellow model Imaan Hammam who is another well recognisable model who happens to have naturally curly hair. Despite this Jenner is the one modelling Afro-hair whilst Hammam's hair appears to have been straightened. This incident attracted swarms of appalled fans who slated Kendall and Vogue as they claimed that this was 'cultural appropriation'. Many where extremely annoyed at the fact they had a model with naturally curly Afro-hair but still decided that Jenner would be the perfect fit for someone to portray people with Afro's. Viewers spammed the media with comments such as, "I swear Kendall enjoys pissing black people off" and "Why have Vogue decided to make Kendall Jenner a 'make shift' Afro". Vogue released a statement attempting to justify the hairstyle and still Jenner stayed silent and left the pictures up on her Instagram page, this caused an uproar amongst critics as Jenner made no effort to acknowledge her involvement in this issue. Fans recognised that this is yet another incident where Jenner fails to realise what is going on in the world around her and is so entitled that she refuses to admit her mistakes.

The overall way that Kendall Jenner is represented is that she is just another unaware, unbothered celebrity who is in denial that she has the privileges to get away with the many mistakes she has made and her viewers perceive her as a 'bland', 'talentless' person who is successful because of her families popularity.

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