Doritos has announced that it has parted ways with its new transgender partner in Spain, Samantha Hudson, following backlash over old tweets by the activist, now deleted, in which she apparently endorsed pedophilia. The PepsiCo brand said on Tuesday that the decision was not connected with Hudson’s gender identity.
Two days prior, the popular chip maker posted a 50-second video on Instagram featuring the 24-year-old transgender influencer and singer as part of a media advertising campaign dubbed ‘Crunch Talks’.
The video quickly drew backlash from conservative viewers who likened the endorsement to the highly controversial partnership between Bud Light and transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney last year. The subsequent boycott of the popular beer brand has cost its parent company a reported $1.4 billion in sales.
Users also pointed to the fact that Hudson, born Ivan Gonzalez Ranedo, has described herself as “anti-capitalist” and “Marxist” in interviews, and has stated that she wants to “abolish, destroy and annihilate the traditional monogamous nuclear family.”
However, a number of old, deleted tweets drew particular outrage from people online and ultimately seem to have led to Hudson’s firing.
In one post from 2015, she apparently wrote “I want to do thuggish things like stick a 12 year old girl up her *******.”
In 2014, she wrote that she was “in the middle of the street in Mallorca in panties and screaming that I’m a nymphomaniac in front of a super beautiful 8-year-old girl.” In another deleted post, Hudson also stated: “I hate women who are victims of sexual assault and go to self help centers to overcome their trauma. Annoying sl**s.”
After the tweets resurfaced, Hudson reportedly said she “doesn’t remember having written such barbarities,” but apologized, insisting that the posts were “pure provocation” and a bad attempt at “dark humor,” as reported by Rolling Stone magazine.
Nevertheless, conservatives have called for a boycott of Doritos over the partnership, with a number of pundits like journalist Matt Agorist suggesting that the brand’s association with “an admitted pedo” was “next level WTF.”
In a statement to Rolling Stone on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Doritos Spain said the brand had been “made aware of Samantha’s deleted tweets from 2015” and that the company had “ended the relationship and stopped all related campaign activity due to the comments.” The video featuring Hudson has also been deleted.