Chrissy Teigen, US model and wife of singer John Legend, has broken a month-long social media silence to apologise for bullying several people online especially Twitter.
In May, Teigen was outed as one of the many celebrities who had cyberbullied model Courtney Stodden when they were just a teenager.
It was revealed that in 2011, Teigen, who was aged 25 at the time, sent Twitter messages to then-16-year-old Stodden, urging them [Stodden is referred to as ‘them’ because she is non-binary] to take their own life.
During that period Stodden rose to fame as the teenage bride of actor Doug Hutchison, who was aged 50 when they married but got divorced last year.
Stodden recently told The Daily Beast that other celebrities had commented on the relationship, saying;
People came out of the woodwork to beat up on a kid because she was in a situation that she shouldn’t have been in. There were a lot of celebrities acting like playground bullies.
After Stodden’s name topped headlines because of their controversial marriage to man almost forty years their senior, some media outlets revealed that Teigen allegedly sent them a number of troubling private messages on social media.
Teigen responded to the claims with a public apology on Twitter at the time, calling herself an “insecure, attention seeking troll.”
She also published a series of tweets in May apologising to Courtney Stodden, who accepted the apology but said it could just be an attempt to limit damage to Teigen’s reputation. Following this, she stepped away from the internet shortly after.
Weeks later, Teigen is speaking to her trolling in a new blog post on Medium. In the piece, titled “Hi again,” she traces the roots of her online misbehaviour.
The mother of two said she was privately reaching out to people she’d insulted in the past, though she did not say who.
After “sitting in a hole of deserved global punishment,” Teigen was able to identify that her need to act out on Twitter was connected to her own insecurity.
In a blog post, the US model reflected on “the crushing weight of regret for the things I’ve said in the past“.
She expressed;
There is simply no excuse for my past horrible tweets. I was a troll, full stop. And I am so sorry. I took to Twitter to try to gain attention and show off what I at the time believed was a crude, clever, harmless quip. I thought it made me cool and relatable if I poked fun at celebrities.
As she became more popular and more famous, Teigen continued, she began to see the error of her ways — especially as she herself started receiving some of the same negativity that she’d dished out in the past.
The model and television personality added that she’s no longer the troll of yesterday because she’s learned how to be more empathetic after going through struggles in her own life.
More importantly, she had to change because she needed to be a role model for her two young children, Luna and Miles.
She added;
In reality, I was insecure, immature and in a world where I thought I needed to impress strangers to be accepted.
She currently has 13.5 million Twitter followers and 35 million on Instagram – where she also shared a link to the blog post.
Teigen said she was not seeking sympathy, and that she was “no longer the person who wrote those horrible things” after getting married, having kids and attending therapy.
She added;
We are all more than our worst moments. I won’t ask for your forgiveness, only your patience and tolerance.
The open letter might be too little, too late for some, as the consequences of Teigen’s trolling played out rather quickly. She was exited her guest appearances on Netflix original series Never Have I Ever.
Though belated, Teigen’s apology hints that she is taking the feedback to heart — only time (and future tweets) will tell just how different her timeline will be.
