UPDATE 5/26/2020 at 1:45 P.M.: Roman has shared another post following her initial apology, thanking those who reached out to her. “The kindness, empathy, tough love, vulnerability and, honesty demonstrated by everyone who wrote in sharing experiences, book recommendations, anecdotes, and thoughtful advice has been overwhelming in the best way,” she wrote. “This was a huge shake-up for me both personally and professionally, and I'm still processing so much, but know that I'm working on it and thinking about it 24/7. The issues brought to light by this whole thing won't be fixed overnight, and the healing process for many will be long, but I'm committed to doing the work to make it better.” She added that she will be starting a newsletter.
UPDATE:Teigen has made her Twitter profile public again, and addressed Roman's response. "thank u for this, @alisoneroman," she wrote. "To be clear, it never once crossed my mind for u to apologize for what you genuinely thought! The comments stung, but they moreso stung because they came from u! It wasn’t my usual news break of some random person hating everything about me!"
In a series of tweets, she continued, "I still think you are incredibly talented. And in an industry that doesn’t really lend itself to supporting more than a handful of people at a time, I feel like all we have are each other!"
"And honestly, for the past few days, every time I saw a shallot I wanted to cry, but I do appreciate this and hopefully we can all be better and learn from the dumb shit we have all said and done."
New York Times contributor and "domestic goddess of the apocalypse" Alison Roman issued a lengthy apology to both Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo on Instagram today after excerpts from an interview made the rounds on the internet over the weekend. In the article, which was published in The New Consumer, Roman called out Teigen and Kondo, saying that they were cashing in and going against the things that they'd evangelized.
"Like, what Chrissy Teigen has done is so crazy to me. She had a successful cookbook. And then it was like: Boom, line at Target. Boom, now she has an Instagram page that has over a million followers where it’s just, like, people running a content farm for her," Roman said. "That horrifies me and it’s not something that I ever want to do. I don’t aspire to that. But like, who’s laughing now? Because she’s making a ton of f–king money."
Roman's comments and the ensuing Twitter reactions actually caused Teigen to step away from social media and Roman has since released an apology, saying that she was sorry and that she didn't realize that she had singled out two women of color and that fact was a function of her white privilege.
"I'm a white woman who has and will continue to benefit from white privilege and I recognize that makes what I said even more inexcusable and hurtful. The fact that it didn't occur to me that I had singled out two Asian women is one hundred percent a function of my privilege (being blind to racial insensitivities is a discriminatory luxury)," she wrote. "I know that our culture frequently goes after women, especially women of color, and I'm ashamed to have contributed to that."
She continued, writing that there needed to be broader discussions about success in the food world and who is allowed to be successful by the industry at large. She adds that she's committed to hearing all sides of the story and open to any criticism that allows her to grow and "do better."
"I've messed up," she finishes. "I promise I'm not putting this behind me in hopes that it goes away. I need to learn from this, and I'm going to use it as a motivation to do and be better."
In the wake of the controversy, Teigen has set her Twitter to private.
"I really hate what this drama has caused this week," she wrote on Sunday. "Calling my kids Petri dish babies or making up flight manifests with my name on them to 'Epstein island,' to justify someone else’s disdain with me seems gross to me so I'm gonna take a little break."