Over the past month or so, Chrissy Teigen has been facing a reckoning for years of horrific behavior towards other women. After Courtney Stodden revealed the extent of the bullying they (Stodden prefers gender-neutral pronouns) received from Teigen when they were still technically a child and in an abusive relationship with a man more than 30 years their senior, everyone suddenly started wondering if the woman who markets herself as America’s BFF was a fraud. Spoiler alert: she is! Now she’s apologizing for being a “troll,” but that’s only because her career is quickly going down the drain.
- A quick look into Teigen’s tweets to Stodden alone unveiled the horrific reality of her behavior. She wasn’t just making negative comments towards Stodden, who was 16 at the time but actively telling the then-teen to kill themself and suggesting they take a “dirt nap.” At one point, she also wrote to Stodden: “I can’t wait until you die.” The bullying was vile and relentless and continued over a period of months. Stodden had never met Teigen and didn’t know her in any way. What made Teigen act so horrifically?
- It wasn’t just Stodden that Teigen bullied. After Stodden came forward about their experience with Teigen, internet sleuths uncovered multiple other instances of the Cravings author saying terrible things to people she didn’t know. From insensitive comments made about Lindsay Lohan self-harming to repeatedly sending abusive messages to Teen Mom star Farrah Abraham. At one point, Teigen publicly tweeted at Abraham writing, “You’re a whore and everyone hates you, whoops not other news, sorry.” Just this week, former Project Runway contestant Michael Costello revealed that Teigen had been trying to ruin his career for the past decade.
- Rightfully, this behavior has started impacting Teigen’s career. Not only did Bloomingdales decide to end its contract with Teigen because of what’s happened but Macy’s also took her cookware range off its website. In addition, Target also dropped her products, though the company says it was a “mutual decision” reached in December. Earlier this month, she “dropped out” (i.e. was dropped from) a voice role on Netflix’s Never Have I Ever. Teigen has basically been chased off of social media and took a month-long hiatus from Twitter, only to come back with a lame “apology” that did nothing to help the situation.
- Teigen’s apology tour is falling on deaf ears. In a lengthy, self-loathing Medium post uploaded on Monday, June 14, Teigen continually consoled herself for having been called out about her terrible behavior and admits she was a “troll” who was “insecure” and “immature” when she wrote the vile tweets. She also claimed that she’s “no longer that person” and pointed out that she’s undergone lengthy therapy sessions to change herself. She said she’s “truly ashamed” and that she knows she has more people to apologize to (though her victims have all claimed that they’ve never heard from her, it should be noted) and that she’s going to keep on working to become the amazing person she knows she can be.
- The post was self-aggrandizing and totally clueless. Not only was it splashed with Teigen’s signature quips – at one point she makes a joke about having to make so many apologies to being like an episode of My Name Is Earl – but the overall tone of the post was that it’s been so hard on HER to be called out for being so vile to her victims and all the things she’s doing to care for herself rather than to make a difference to the people she harassed and abused for years.
- This apology is too little, too late. Anyone who reads Teigen’s Medium post can see the truth: it’s a desperate PR move to retain any semblance of a career that she can. At no point does it seem authentic or sincere; instead, it seems a last-ditch attempt to restore her faux-relatable persona and quiet down the critics who are now subjecting her to a small taste of the vitriol she’s spewed on so many others for years. While I certainly don’t believe that anyone should be sending Teigen abusive messages or “trolling” her, as she would call it, I also don’t think we should simply welcome her back into the limelight knowing what kind of person she truly is deep down. We can all change, yes, but it takes more than a month off Twitter to make those changes. You’ve still got work to do, Chrissy.
