Guys. Guys. Chrissy Teigen made a bad joke about losing headphones, and we must find it in our hearts to forgive such an infraction. We like her, remember?
After all, she’s earned her reputation as a one-woman masterclass in joyful irreverence – from clapping back at mom-shamers (‘John never breastfed Miles’) to gently trolling her husband at every opportunity, ‘I like to send john nudes and say "sorry wrong person"', and from accidentally making friends with a tarantula wasp to scouring LA for brown bananas. She’s cute AF – and lest we forget, she also happens to be the woman responsible for making #PresidentPussyAssBitch trend after a(nother) swipe from Trump labelled her ‘boring John Legend[’s…] filthy-mouthed wife’ back in September. In fact, she’s been speaking snarky truth to power for years – so much so that the US President blocked her like a sulky teenager in July 2017. That is, until a judge ruled he couldn’t legally block anyone – inadvertently solidifying in law Chrissy’s right to direct such gems as ‘lol no one likes you’ straight into POTUS’s mentions.
Point being, Teigen’s a prime example of someone using their platform to a) demystify the hallowed heights of mega-stardom, and b) tackle hypocrisy head on. So when she posted a joke about her mum losing AirPods at a rate of knots, it wouldn’t have been hard to laugh and keep scrolling. ‘My mom treats her air pods like they're disposable. Buys a few a month. she says they would be easier to not lose if they had....a cord’, though, was met with enough backlash – ‘we get it, you’re rich’ – to prompt a classic celebrity-social-media apology tweet. ‘It was meant as a joke (and exaggeration) about how my mom doesn’t realize air pods are with a cord are headphones but it came across as super tone deaf and icky’, Teigen wrote, following the tweet with another: ‘I promise I will not always say the right thing in the right way but I also promise I hate disappointing or pissing you guys off. I’m sorry and I will do better to not be such an asshole.’
Thanks Chrissy. While she’s reflecting on the enormity of her sin, perhaps we can take the time for a little soul searching too. While you could argue that – if Chrissy’s happy to dish out criticism online – she ought to be happy to receive some of her own, the crucial question seems to me to be one about priorities. No one is above correction and critique, but I suspect that the people who dragged her for a thoughtless joke share much more of her world view than that example might suggest. We all say silly things – the internet just memorialises them, rather than letting them slip un-laughed at out of live conversation. Unprecedented political and social unrest, on both sides of the Atlantic, make this the moment to join forces rather than snipe within our own ranks. Look, all I’m saying is – we could get #PresidentPussyAssBitch trending again, if we concentrated. All together now.