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Criticizing her behavior isn't enough. We need to look at ourselves as well.
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on Jun 16, 2021
After weeks of backlash, Chrissy Teigen uploaded an article to Medium, and then to her other platforms, apologizing for past transgressions.
This apology came after Courtney Stodden’s May 2021 interview, where she discussed Teigen’s cyberbullying against her.
Teigen had said things like, “I can’t wait for you to die,” "I hate you," that she wanted Stodden to take a “dirt nap,” and wished she would "go to sleep forever."
Teigen had apologized previously, but once again took to the keyboard to double down and express her embarrassment and regret.
Soon after she released her apology, fashion designer Michael Costello came out and accused Teigen of causing him irreparable trauma, to the point where he “didn’t see the point of living."
Costello had been accused of being racist after a photoshopped image surfaced where he used the N-word. The image was completely fake.
“In 2014, I received a public comment from Chrissy Teigen on my Instagram page, accusing me of being racist. She apparently formed her own opinion of me based on a Photoshopped comment floating around the internet which has now been proven to be false by Instagram and since taken down. When I reached out to Chrissy Teigen to communicate that I was the victim of a vindictive cyber slander, and that everything she thought I was is not who I am, she told me that my career was over and that all my doors will be shut from there on,” Costello wrote in his Instagram post.
Costello also posted a text message exchange between he and Teigen, where she had said, “Racist people like you deserve to suffer and die. You might as well be dead. Your career is over, just watch.”
Teigen had even convinced other brands and designers to stop working with Costello. He was fired from jobs for no reason and saw a lot of doors being closed on him.
Once all this news broke, Twitter was on fire with comments and opinions of Chrissy Teigen turning sour. The old “Queen of Twitter” turned into a villain of sorts.
But Chrissy Teigen was always a bully. The signs of her toxicity were there — people just didn’t see it when they agreed with her takes and opinions.
Teigen’s rise in popularity seemed to snowball for a while. Originally known as “John Legend’s girlfriend,” she began making a name for herself when she appeared in the "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue" in 2010.
Working with big names like Brooklyn Decker and Lily Aldridge, appearing in many TV stints like "Model Employee" on VH1, and hosting some of her own cooking specials, she became a widely-known figure and was seen as a very relatable, entertaining person on social media.
She consistently ragged on her husband (jokingly, of course), and made commentary on her life and the things she saw on the internet.
Despite being a good source of amusement on the internet, as early as 2010, Teigen was a bully who preyed on the weak and vulnerable.
While the red flags were always there, followers chose not to see them. And the people she has attacked over the years is quite a large list.
Demi Lovato has a history of drug abuse and entered herself into rehab several times. The controversy surrounding these topics are divided, but Teigen’s comments on the matter were truly mean.
She mocked the then-teen star for seeking rehabilitation back in 2010, and joked that she should “make the bed for Charlie [Sheen]” on her way out.
In 2011, Teigen fired a tweet at Lindsay Lohan, mocking her struggles with self-harm, that said, “Lindsay adds a few more slits to her wrists when she sees Emma Stone.”
While Lohan herself never commented on the deleted tweet, her mother spoke to Page Six and said, “When someone says hurtful words, they’re not just hurting that person, they’re hurting their siblings, their mother, their grandma. They’re inflicting so much pain."
In 2013, Teigen attacked actress Quvenzhané Wallis, then 9 years old, saying, “Is it okay to call a small child cocky? I am forced to like Quvenzhané Wallis because she’s a child right? Okay fine.” She also responded to an Onion headline that called Wallis the C-word, asking the satire site if they were hiring. Wallis had been nominated for an Oscar for her role in “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”
Continuing her rampage, she then targeted Courtney Stodden, who married 51-year-old Doug Hutchinson in 2011 when she was 16. And now, as we know, those tweets basically insinuated that Stodden should end her life.
In 2013, after Farrah Abraham revealed her pregnancy, Teigen once again flexed her Twitter fingers to insult her and her character, tweeting, "farrah abraham now thinks she is pregnant from her sex tape. in other news you're a w**** and everyone hates you whoops not other news sorry."
Farrah Abraham did not receive an apology, nor did Michael Costello, who became her next victim a year later.
Over the years, Teigen began to rack up small beefs with other personalities, including Tyra Banks who she clashed with behind the set of their talk show, “FabLife.”
Her biggest rise to stardom, and probably her biggest break in finding some sort of cover for her toxicity, was her series of tweets berating and harassing Donald Trump.
Now, everyone was doing it — the left, the right, the Twitter users with 10 followers, and the mega-stars with millions. Everybody made fun of Trump when he screwed up.
And despite all that, Teigen seemed to be at the center of it all. In fact, she really got under Trump’s skin.
She wrote tweets like, “Trump is like, actually racist. He isn't 'saying the wrong thing.' He is actually racist and means this. Holy s*** lol what a f***ing idiot” or “trump became president the same year people started eating tide pods” — and she got hundreds of thousands of likes, and likely millions of impressions.
At a certain point, Trump blocked her and asked an appeals court for the power to block critics on Twitter.
Whether or not the bullying of Donald Trump was justified doesn’t matter.
Teigen's behavior has constantly been that of a toxic bandwagoner, jumping from one thing to the next, fueling her content with the hatred of people like her online who bullied vulnerable individuals in an attempt to achieve some sort of justice.
Earlier this year, Teigen quit Twitter, acknowledging that she used her platform in a very harmful way. She claimed in her newest apology that she had been getting a lot of therapy in an attempt to evolve and change her ways for her children and her husband.
But is that enough? Followers of the social media world need to be better as a collective.
Those of us who encourage this type of behavior need to do some reflecting. Just because we don't want to be the ones saying rude things, these words have a real impact.
For over a decade, we let this behavior slide, and in that time, Teigen has made so many people angry and ashamed. So why did we finally stop now?
Spotting this type of toxicity should be second nature, and not giving these people the attention they seek is a top priority.
In the same way Chrissy Teigen became the villain, we should hold accountable those who hurt others in an attempt for internet points — it's just not worth it.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice and relationships