Following her dramatic exit from Twitter last month, Chrissy Teigen returned to the microblogging platform. The author and wife to John Legend had been a staple on the app after battling it out with trolls, far-right conservatives, and for a while, former President Donald Trump. “I truly consider so many of you my actual friends. But it’s time for me to say goodbye,” she said at the end of March. “This no longer serves me as positively as it serves me negatively, and I think that’s the right time to call something.”
It only took a few weeks before Teigen made her triumphant return and now, Legend is speaking about what his wife has endured online. During a virtual interview with the Tamron Hall Show, Legend said he believes that women face harsher criticisms online than their male counterparts.
David Crotty / Stringer / Getty Images
“For social media, the downside is you get lots of feedback, a lot of good feedback, a lot of bad feedback, too,” said Legend. “People feel somewhat of a cloak of anonymity that they’ll say things to you on Twitter, or other social media, that they wouldn’t say to you in person. And they feel empowered to be more cruel sometimes.”
Legend also said that in the end, his wife wanted to return to Twitter because she believed she had positive, beneficial moments with the public that outweighed the criticisms. “Chrissy honestly missed it. She missed the engagement. She missed sharing her thoughts with people,” he added. “Despite some of the negativity that we all encounter, and I think women encounter more than men, truthfully, on social media, but despite all of that, she felt like the benefits and the positive interaction she has outweighed the negative.”
Watch John Legend on the Tamron Hall Show below.