Chrissy Teigen has vowed to seek “self improvement and change” after weeks of controversy over her past comments on social media.
The model and cookbook author on Monday published a Medium blog post in which she acknowledged having experienced the “crushing weight of regret for the things I’ve said in the past.”
“There is simply no excuse for my past horrible tweets,” Teigen wrote. “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,” she added. “And I am so sorry.”
Teigen’s comments come about a month after Courtney Stodden accused her of routinely bullying them online. The reality star, who is nonbinary, recalled old tweets sent by Teigen in 2011 in which she told the then-16-year-old to kill themself.
“She wouldn’t just publicly tweet about wanting me to take ‘a dirt nap’ but would privately DM me and tell me to kill myself,” they told The Daily Beast in May. “Things like, ‘I can’t wait for you to die.’”
Just days after Stodden made the allegations, Teigen apologized in a Twitter thread. “I’m mortified and sad at who I used to be,” she wrote at the time. “I was an insecure, attention seeking troll.” Earlier this month, Netflix confirmed she’d dropped out of a planned appearance on the series “Never Have I Ever” amid the controversy.
On Monday, Teigen steered clear of mentioning Stodden by name, noting only that she’d “apologized publicly to one person.” Much of her blog, however, read like a preemptive mea culpa to others who might come forward with similar claims.
“Words have consequences and there are real people behind the Twitter handles I went after,” she said. “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?”
Elsewhere in the blog post, Teigen described a clear division between her social media commentary and real-life behavior, and noted that she was “in the process of privately reaching out to the people I insulted.”
“I won’t ask for your forgiveness, only your patience and tolerance,” she added. “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.”
Teigen, 35, boasts more than 13.5 million Twitter followers, and is generally known for her witty, effervescent musings. However, her social media presence has gotten more checkered as of late. Just weeks before Stodden went public with their allegations, the mother of two announced she was quitting Twitter, explaining that she’d become “a different human” in the decade-plus she’d been active on the social network.
Her March departure came days after she received backlash for collaborating with Kris Jenner on a line of plant-based cleaning products. She was also criticized when she opened up about a traumatic pregnancy loss last year.
By mid-April, she reactivated her account, noting, “turns out it feels TERRIBLE to silence yourself and also no longer enjoy belly chuckles randomly throughout the day.”