Why Does Chrissy Teigen Keep Getting A Free Pass On Abusive Behavior?

Stodden revealed the sordid details in an interview with The Daily Beast. She claims that back in 2011, when she was only 16 years old, Chrissy Teigen would privately DM her on Twitter and encourage her to kill herself. “'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. Things like, ‘I can't wait for you to die.’”

A 'dirt nap' refers to a dead person's burial. Teigen tweeted to Stodden in 2011: “My friday fantasy: you. dirt nap. mmmmmm baby.”

Another tweet from Teigen to Stodden said “go. to sleep. forever.”

Stodden Was a Brief Celebrity at the Time — and Not for Good Reasons

If you don’t recall, Courtney Stodden made headlines in 2011 when she married actor Doug Hutchinson, who was 51 at the time. (They’re now divorced.) The public was rightfully horrified (and fascinated) that Stodden’s parents had given their permission for her to wed a man old enough to be her father when she wasn’t even of legal age. 

Stodden has since confessed that she wasn’t ready for the marriage and felt that people who knew better should have been protecting her from the clearly exploitative arrangement. Last Friday, she looked back at the relationship that made her infamous: “Ten years ago, I turned 16. Nothing could have prepared me for what was around the corner. I had a child’s mind, a teenager’s body, and I was a virgin. However, it appeared to everyone around me that I was a woman who was grown and able to make my own choices. According to many, I was ‘mature’ enough to date men my father’s age (or older), and eventually marry one.”

But in 2011, Chrissy Teigen was 26, a full 10 years older (although presumably not wiser) than the girl she was bullying. Whatever Teigen’s opinions about Stodden’s life choices, surely sending abusive tweets and (allegedly) encouraging her to kill herself were exactly the opposite of what the young girl needed at the time. 

Today, Teigen attempted an apology on Twitter, addressing the bullying accusations by claiming she was an “insecure, attention-seeking troll.” She claims that she attempted to reach out to Stodden directly, but wanted to publicly apologize as well.

This Isn’t Chrissy Teigen’s First Scandal

Just two years later in 2013, Teigen came under fire for attacking child actress Quvenzhané Wallis after she won Best Dressed at the Oscars that year. 

“Is it okay to call a small child cocky?” Teigen tweeted, talking about Wallis. Twitter users instantly called her out for the inappropriate tweet, but Teigen refused to apologize and doubled down instead. “I am forced to like Quvenzhané Wallis because she’s a child right?” “Okay fine.” 

Her habit of tweeting inappropriate and outright creepy tweets about children continued. 

It finally caught up with her in July 2020, when online conspiracy theorists claimed the tweets were proof that Teigen was connected to Epstein. (There was no evidence of this.) However, Teigen did decide to respond by deleting 60,000 tweets and blocking over a million users.

Why Does She Keep Getting a Free Pass?

Despite over a decade’s worth of bizarre and sometimes outright abusive Twitter behavior, Teigen still remains one of the platform’s most famous users. In January, right after Biden took office, Teigen tweeted at the President’s account that she had been blocked by Trump for most of his presidency, and could she plz get a follow? Apparently one of Biden’s social media team noticed, and the day after his inauguration, she was one of only a small handful of users followed by the President’s official account. 

A lot of weird stuff happened this year so far, but that moment might take the cake. So how did this relatively unknown model, who got famous for marrying a singer, become such an influential force in American pop-culture and politics? And why are we continuing to allow her abusive, creepy, and downright trashy behavior to continue as if it’s all totally normal?

We’re not in it for cancel culture, but we should be able to say that people with a history of inappropriate behavior towards children maybe shouldn’t be a super influential force in American culture. 

Closing Thoughts

Who knows, maybe this is the moment that the Twitter mob and cancel culture will finally come for Chrissy Teigen. But she seems remarkably immune to them, no matter how gross or terrible her behavior is. Whatever immunity she’s got, we’d like some of that please.

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