Doritos Spain faces backlash over partnership with trans influencer Samantha Hudson (Pablo Cuadra/WireImage via Getty Images)
Doritos Spain has ended its relationship with trans influencer and artist Samantha Hudson after controversial past tweet resurfaced.
Over the weekend, the company – a wholly-owned subsidiary of PepsiCo – announced a one-off campaign with Hudson, including her in a short promo called “Crunch Talks”, Newsweek reported.
However, soon after the announcement, Doritos Spain began to face a backlash as controversial “joke” tweets by the trans artist resurfaced, including from 2015, when she was a teenager, in which she mocked victims of sexual assault, and a crass joke about a 12 year old.
Hudson, who rose to fame as a musician in 2015, was also criticised for quotes in which she advocated for “annihilating, completely destroying and abolishing the traditional family”.
Since the tweets resurfaced, Hudson has been criticised by several prominent right-wing online figures, including Oli London and Ian Miles Cheong.
“Doritos is doubling down on wokeness by hiring Samantha Hudson, a transgender ‘woman’ as its brand ambassador in Spain, resulting in calls for the boycott of the company’s products,” Malaysian commentator Cheong wrote on Twitter/X.
A spokesperson for Doritos Spain told PinkNews: “We recently created a content series with Samantha Hudson, a local influencer. After the campaign started, we were made aware of Samantha’s deleted Tweets from around 2015.
“We have ended the relationship and stopped all related campaign activity due to the comments. We strongly condemn words or actions that promote violence or sexism of any kind.”
Separate calls to boycott Doritos Spain simply due to Hudson being trans follow anti-trans campaigners targeting other well-known brands, including Tampax, Starbucks and Nike, after the firms collaborated with trans or non-binary influencers. Most notable on the list is Bud Light, which became the focus of intense criticism for partnering with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
The outrage resulted in right-wingers calling for a boycott of the beer and smashing bottles on supermarket shelves. Musician Kid Rock even shot at several cans with a rifle.
Mulvaney has since criticised Bud Light for not publicly protecting her in the wake of the backlash, saying: “For a company to hire a trans person, then not publicly stand by them is worse, in my opinion, than not hiring a trans person at all.”