Chrissy Teigen shares lengthy apology for online bullying: ‘I’m truly ashamed’
Teigen says she was "insecure, immature and in a world where I thought I needed to impress strangers."
Supermodel Chrissy Teigen issued a lengthy apology for online bullying after facing the accusations from several people.
American fashion designer Michael Costello and model Courtney Stodden were among those who made the claim. Costello alleged that he frequently had thoughts of suicide after Teigen allegedly blacklisted him in the wake of what he says was a doctored Instagram comment that made him appear to look racist.
He says he is still “traumatized, depressed, and (has) thoughts of suicide” after the 2014 incident.
Teigen issued a lengthy statement on her Instagram and in a Medium essay, where she apologized for her bullying past as a self-proclaimed “internet troll.”
Noting “a VERY humbling few weeks,” Teigen told friends and followers, “I know I’ve been quiet, and lord knows you don’t want to hear about me, but I want you to know I’ve been sitting in a hole of deserved global punishment, the ultimate ‘sit here and think about what you’ve done.’”
“Not a day, not a single moment has passed where I haven’t felt the crushing weight of regret for the things I’ve said in the past,” she continued. “As you know, a bunch of my old awful (awful, awful) tweets resurfaced. I’m truly ashamed of them. As I look at them and understand the hurt they caused, I have to stop and wonder: How could I have done that?”
Teigen says she has apologized to one person, Stodden, who now uses them/they pronouns. Stodden said Teigen sent them a message telling them to kill themself after they married a 50-year-old man at the age of 16.
Teigen issued a public apology to Stodden in May, but Stodden claims the star never reached out to them privately.
“There is simply no excuse for my past horrible tweets. My targets didn’t deserve them. No one does. Many of them needed empathy, kindness, understanding, and support, not my meanness masquerading as a kind of casual, edgy humor,” Teigen wrote Monday. “I was a troll, full stop. And I am so sorry.”
Teigen now contends she was “insecure, immature and in a world where I thought I needed to impress strangers to be accepted.”
“Now, confronted with some of the things that I said, I cringe to my core,” she admitted. “I’ll honestly get sharp, stabbing pains in my body, randomly remembering my a–hole past and I deserve it. Words have consequences and there are real people behind the Twitter handles I went after. I wasn’t just attacking some random avatar, but hurting young women — some who were still girls — who had feelings. How could I not stop and think of that?”
She notes that her children have helped her realize that she has failed in the past, but she’s evolving.
Teigen said her goal is to be “good,” writing, “the good that has the best intentions, the good who wakes up wanting to make her friends, family, her team, and fans as happy as possible. The good who will still f— up in front of the world but rarely, and never not growing only more good from it.”
She asked for “patience and tolerance” as she “takes time” to focus on herself.
Her husband, John Legend, left four heart emoji’s under Teigen’s Instagram post.
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