Chrissy Teigen Issued A Long Apology For Her Bullying — Here Are My Thoughts About That

After a month-ish hiatus, Chrissy Teigen is back to posting on Instagram. In case you missed it, Chrissy took a little break following some big (well-deserved) backlash when Courtney Stodden — former teen spouse (and alleged abuse victim) of a 50-something, fame-hungry D-list actor whose name doesn’t warrant a mention — brought some of Chrissy’s past tweets into the mainstream again. Courtney, who recently revealed that they are non-binary and use they/them pronouns, detailed the abusive way Chrissy talked to them and tweeted about them in the past, encouraging Courtney to “take a dirt nap,” among other really heinous things.

Chrissy apologized publicly. She seems sorry, and the apology was a whole thing, but there’s a little problem here.

Courtney Stodden was one of many people that Chrissy targeted on Twitter when she was coming into her fame.

Yesterday, she posted a lengthy apology for being shitty for years to people she perceived as famous. It’s really long and you can read it all on IG for yourself, but the gist is kind of, “I swear I’m really nice! I was just insecure, and I didn’t really think about how being a mean girl would affect the actual human beings I was verbally shitting on. Totally promise I’m working on myself and saying sorry to people, and I’m not going to do that anymore!” That’s not a direct quote, but I feel like that’s all the words I would have needed to say the same thing.

Honestly, don’t come for me, but I like Chrissy Teigen as she’s been the last few years. I didn’t know who she was back when she was being an asshole on the daily. I just know she posts about her adorable kids and her mom and does ridiculous things like asking her fans to meet up with her and give her brown bananas when she craves banana bread during the pandemic. Because I never really witnessed the bulk of her toxicity, I’ve enjoyed her content in the past.

I’m also not one to scream “CANCELLED!” every time someone fucks up.

I don’t think most people are beyond redemption, and I am okay with second chances sometimes. (Not all the time, obvs. Some stuff is a one-and-done infraction.)

I think Chrissy is actually ashamed of herself and full of regret. As she fucking should be. She chose to be the worst kind of bully online for years. Her abusive behavior deeply scarred multiple people. It was never funny, and she deserves to feel so embarrassed.

I think she’s telling the truth when she says that being on the receiving end of internet trolling and abuse gave her a taste of her own bitter medicine and taught her a thing or two. (Remember when people insisted she eats babies and when people absolutely tore her to shreds when her baby died in utero?) Chrissy has truly been the target of the worst of the internet community. We can’t pretend she hasn’t.

But no matter how she feels in her heart, Chrissy’s apology isn’t enough to call this case closed.

All the private apologies she promises she is making just aren’t enough, either. A one-month break isn’t enough. Nobody gets any healing from that except for her.

When she chose to be scathing and sarcastic online, real people suffered. Project Runway Season 8 contestant Michael Costello, who has dressed BEYONCE for God’s sake, just came forward to detail the hell he has been through since he got caught in Chrissy’s crosshairs in 2014.

A screenshot of him allegedly using a racial slur started circulating, and he maintains that it was photoshopped. He swears he never said it. Well, Chrissy believed he did, apparently, and proceeded to (also allegedly, although he did provide receipts, so do what you will with that info) campaign against him in the fashion industry, slamming doors in his face and changing the course of his career. There’s also a “suffer and die” thrown in there. He reports being depressed to the point of planning his own death.

Look, everyone hates a racist. I can’t find any concrete proof in two minutes of googling as to WTF Michael Costello did or didn’t say, and I’m too lazy to keep searching, so to be clear, I’m not insisting he’s completely innocent. I don’t know either way. And it should be known that I’m definitely Team Cancel for every non-Black person who uses the N-word for any reason. Cancel the shit out of all of them. If Michael Costello used a slur in the way he is accused of, burn that white lace dress Beyoncé wore to the 2014 Grammys and take away his sewing machine.

But like, at what point did Chrissy Teigen become the judge and jury for anyone who may or may not have behaved badly?

She was the queen of behaving badly, and she got away with it over and over. Nobody campaigned against HER when she was telling Courtney Stodden to kill themself, or making jokes about Lindsay Lohan self-harming, or even coming for then NINE-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis.

Chrissy doesn’t want to be canceled for things she actually admits to saying, but she’s the first one to jump on the cancel wagon when someone else allegedly screws up?

Come on, Mrs. Legend. You’ve got to see the irony there. Also, while we are here…why did you keep telling people to die or kill themselves? That’s next-level mean. It’s not okay. It doesn’t feel normal to me. I’m glad you are in therapy because whole, healthy people don’t wish death on strangers via tweet or DM every time they don’t like something they do. There’s something to unpack there.

Even though I feel really adamant that a month off social media and a long-ass apology isn’t enough to make up for years of online torture, I don’t even know what I want from Chrissy Teigen, honestly.

Luckily, it’s not my job to tell her what she should do to earn her second chance. It’s on her and her expensive PR machine to figure out how to be better and to make sure we all know she’s working on it.

Maybe she could start with a little less jabbering about how different and sorry she is now? As contrite as she attempted to be, I felt like her lengthy apology included way too much justification and explanation for her really, really shitty behavior.

Listen, I like you, Chrissy Teigen, but you fucked up, bestie. You’ve got a long road ahead of you, and it’s going to suck. But probably not quite as much as it sucked for everyone you bullied and harassed, so … ya know. The sympathy might be in short supply.

You might want to lay low … and maybe turn off commenting.