New York Times food columnist Alison Roman got herself into hot water over comments she made about Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo during an interview with The New Consumer. Roman, who penned best-selling cookbook Nothing Fancy, was talking about what moves she didn’t want to make as she furthered her career—and took jabs at Teigen and Kondo for “selling out.”
“Like the idea that when Marie Kondo decided to capitalize on her fame and make stuff that you can buy, that is completely antithetical to everything she’s ever taught you,” Roman said. “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. That horrifies me and it’s not something that I ever want to do.”
Roman’s words upset Teigen, who is a fan, and prompted Teigen to speak about her disappointment on Twitter. In the midst of this conflict between these two women, social media users jumped in, some saying that Roman is now canceled and then others harassing Teigen. Good times for all. What a wonderful world we live in.
After all of the drama, today, Roman issued an apology on Twitter, explaining why she was wrong to trash Teigen and Kondo.
“Among the many uncomfortable things I’ve begun processing is the knowledge that my comments were rooted in my own insecurity,” she wrote. “My inability to appreciate my own success without comparing myself and knocking others down—in this case two accomplished women—is something I recognize I most definitely struggle with, and am working to fix. I don’t want to be a person like that.”
“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),” Roman added. “I know that our culture frequently goes after women, especially women of color, and I’m ashamed to have contributed to that.”
Teigen accepted Roman’s apology, posting on Twitter that “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!”
Marie Kondo has not responded to the controversy—something Teigen noted in her response.
I thought food was supposed to bring people together?