Alas, her reign ended with the Courtney Stodden cyberbullying scandal, and after an apology, Teigen bowed out of social media for a good month or so — only to return Monday with an even lengthier apology.
AND GOT MORE THERAPY.” And even more curiously, she seems to psychoanalyze herself, throughout: “I was insecure, immature and in a world where I thought I needed to impress strangers to be accepted.” She also wrote of her attacks, “My targets didn’t deserve them.
Teigen’s apologies have been criticized as a supposedly self-serving attempt at stopping brands and sponsorships from dropping her, which could be true.
Not being able to quit something that you know isn’t good for you, whether that’s social media apps that damage your self-esteem, or a toxic relationship, is a universal human struggle and, quite on-brand for Teigen, arguably the quintessential relatable struggle.
Rowling — if you were that rich, why would you be constantly doubling and tripling down on transphobic commentary on Twitter, when you could be out getting some sun, traveling, seeing the world? And then there’s that other Twitter devotee who used to lead our country.
Specific to Teigen, her journey of social media stardom is worth tracing back for a deeper understanding of her actions and the public’s relationship to her persona.
In 2011, Courtney Stodden first rose to fame as the 16-year-old bride of “Green Mile” actor Doug Hutchison, and quickly became the subject of widespread bullying and cruel “jokes,” despite being the victim of grooming and predation.
In a May interview with the Daily Beast, Stodden further alleges Teigen sent them direct messages, too.
In Costello’s texts with Teigen, she tells him he “deserve to suffer and die,” and “you might as well be dead.” In his statement, Costello writes that for years, being blacklisted from his industry made him suffer depression and suicidal ideation.
Also in 2014, Teigen departed Twitter for the first time following a controversial yet unfortunately not untrue post on gun control, in which she wrote, “active shooting in Canada, or as we call it in america, wednesday.
Of her departure at that time, Teigen wrote, “I can’t see anything through the sea of hate and anger that is now my Twitter.
But early on, in the fall of 2016 shortly before Trump won the election, Teigen briefly micro-quit Twitter, making her profile with 2.8 million followers “private,” shortly after being trolled for defending Kim Kardashian from mean jokes after Kardashian had been robbed and held at gunpoint in her Paris hotel room.
She was blocked by Trump in July 2017, shortly after responding to one of his tweets, “Lolllllll no one likes you.” In 2019, when Trump called Legend a “boring” singer, and Teigen, his “filthy-mouthed wife,” Teigen offered the perfect response, tweeting, “lol what a p*ssy ass b*tch.
While promoting a collaboration with the brand Material, New York Times food writer Alison Roman referenced Teigen and Marie Kondo in her scathing criticism of celebrities and famous people leveraging popularity to start their own brands or lines of consumer goods, which Roman was notably doing, herself.
The incident drew significant backlash for Roman, as many argued her interview was hypocritical, and also highlighted how she had singled out women of color, despite the abundance of white women — and for that matter, men in the field — examples she could have cited to make the same point.
Last fall, Teigen and Legend lost their unborn son Jack 20 weeks into her pregnancy.
By early 2021, while Teigen remained widely beloved by liberal, blue-wave, “resistance” Twitter, many on the left had grown critical of her, as a wealthy celebrity seemingly trying to be relatable to middle or working-class people online.
In March, Teigen called it quits, formally leaving Twitter, but not before a lengthy thread in which she describes how hard she’s tried to entertain and bring joy to her fans, but found the negativity just wasn’t worth it.
As old and deleted tweets of Teigen’s continue to be unearthed, and news continues to circulate about her leaving or being removed from projects, Teigen has been scarce online, lately, save for her Medium apology.
But Teigen’s pattern of taking these attacks from online randoms too hard has often raised a question of why, on top of having nearly everything anyone could ever dream of having, she still has needed so desperately to be liked.
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