Chrissy Teigen Apologizes for Cyberbullying and Her "Past Horrible Tweets" | "I Was a Troll, and I Am so Sorry"

Trigger Warning: This story contains details about bullying and suicide that may be disturbing to readers.

Chrissy Teigen has always been very active on social media, but after she was accused of cyberbullying by TV personality Courtney Stodden, she took a month-long hiatus. Stodden, who identifies as nonbinary, revealed during a May interview with The Daily Beast that Teigen harassed and bullied them on Twitter around 10 years ago, per BuzzFeed News.

Stodden shared old tweets and DMs from Teigen in which she told the then-16-year-old to kill themselves and called them names. Stodden was mocked and shamed by the public for marrying 50-year-old actor Doug Hutchison as a 16-year-old in 2011. They revealed that Teigen would "privately DM me and tell me to kill myself. Things like, 'I can’t wait for you to die.'"

"She has sent me so many different tweets," Stodden said. "Private DMs, up 'til a couple years ago. It's so damaging when you have someone like Chrissy Teigen bullying children." The model and cookbook author also came under fire for bullying Lindsay Lohan and Farrah Abraham, when they were younger, cites PEOPLE.

The last anyone heard from Teigen was through a series of tweets on May 13 where she apologized for being "an insecure, attention-seeking troll." Now, over a month later, she shared a Medium post acknowledging her past and apologizing for her mistakes.

"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 wrote.

"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 shared that while she's apologized to one person, there are more she needs to reach out to. "I’m in the process of privately reaching out to the people I insulted. I understand that they may not want to speak to me. I don’t think I’d like to speak to me. But if they do, I am here and I will listen to what they have to say while apologizing through sobs."

She then wrote that there is nothing that can make her behavior in the past okay. "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."

"I was a troll, full stop. And I am so sorry."

Teigen then thought it was important to talk about why she did what she did. "In reality, I was insecure, immature, and in a world where I thought I needed to impress strangers to be accepted. If there was a pop culture pile-on, 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."

She mentioned that her social media personality was completely different from who she was in real life. "The truth is, I’m no longer the person who wrote those horrible things. I grew up, got therapy, got married, had kids, got more therapy, experienced loss, and pain, got more therapy, and experienced more life. AND GOT MORE THERAPY."

She concluded by saying, "We are all more than our worst moments."

"I won't ask for your forgiveness, only your patience, and tolerance. I ask that you allow me, as I promise to allow you, to own past mistakes and be given the opportunity to seek self-improvement and change," said Teigen. "Phew. A lot, I know. Thanks for listening."

However, after issuing her apology, designer Michael Costello came forward on his Instagram to reveal he was also bullied by Teigen, and it pushed him to the verge of self-harm. After stating that he would "not be happy until I speak my mind," Costello said he "wanted to kill myself" and is still "traumatized, depressed, and have thoughts of suicide" after Teigen allegedly accused him of being a racist in 2014 on his Instagram page.

Costello claims that Teigen "formed her own opinion of me" after seeing a "photoshopped comment" that was eventually proven to be false by Instagram. So, he reached out to her to explain, but he was told "that my career was over and that all my doors will be shut from now on." Costello then stated, "As a result of what Chrissy Teigen did to me in 2014, I am not okay...To this day, I am still not able to recover from the years of trauma I have experienced."

References:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-crucifixion-of-courtney-stodden

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tasneemnashrulla/chrissy-teigen-apology-tweets-troll

https://people.com/tv/chrissy-teigen-apologizes-after-past-online-bullying/

https://twitter.com/chrissyteigen

https://chrissyteigen.medium.com/hi-again-3bb3faffa76d

https://www.buzzfeed.com/larryfitzmaurice/michael-costello-chrissy-teigen-bullying-suicidal-thoughts 

Cover Image Source: Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Families Belong Together LA