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Chrissy Teigen opens up about mommy shamers: 'It gets to me every time'

Chrissy Teigen opened up to TODAY about mommy shamers and how she handles the anxiety of traveling with a baby.
/ Source: TODAY

Chrissy Teigen has never been afraid to speak her mind.

The 31-year-old has been candid about everything from her battle with postpartum depression to her relationship with husband John Legend — but her open-book nature has attracted a lot of criticism as well. Now as a mom, the model gets shamed for her parenting style.

“It gets to me every time,” Teigen told TODAY about the nasty comments she sees on social media. “I feel like pregnancy is the time for them to warm you up to the shaming that’s about to come because they really go in on you.”

The cookbook author offered a recent example: when she posted a photo of 1-year-old daughter Luna wearing jelly shoes. “She’s obsessed with jelly shoes and every time I put them on her, I get a million people saying, ‘Those have chemicals in them,’” she revealed. “It’s just so much. I don’t want to have to look at a photo for 20 minutes before I post it.”

In March, Teigen was harshly critiqued for how she held Luna, but was later commended by some followers after she snapped back on Twitter when people began to criticize her then-10-month-old for “never showing emotion.” “You realize you’re going to get it no matter what, and it started when I was pregnant,” she said. “If I seem like I don’t care, I definitely care.”

Like many moms, Teigen turns to “mommy blogs” for advice from other moms and comfort from the shamers. “I read a lot of mommy blogs where we don’t take ourselves too seriously and that really helps,” she revealed. “It makes you realize that the moms that are the most angry or crazy about their cause, they just happen to be the loudest. But, they’re not the majority.”

But, one thing that’s been particularly tough is the stress of traveling with a baby. “I know I’m going to get those looks from people on the airplane,” Teigen said at an event celebrating her partnership with Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card. “I’m very hyper aware of children on a plane. John tells me all the time that I actually think my daughter is the loudest. She’s really not, but that’s what my anxiety does to me.”

Teigen said she puts in a lot of prep work to minimize the stress. “We bring a big variety of toys because one minute she’s going to want something really creative and then the next she’ll want something really active, one minute she just wants to play with makeup,” she said. “So, I over-pack my carry-on for sure.”

She added, “And I make sure you do everything early like packing, etc., so you’re not too stressed out yourself and flustered right before you go out the door. If you’re flustered, then your kids pick up on it.”

Perhaps it’s this mindset that has helped Legend and Teigen to easily mesh Luna into their busy travel schedule, which included Bali and Venice this summer. “Traveling and eating is really important for John and I,” she said. “It might sound bad, but we never really wanted to work around her schedule. We always thought she could always fall into ours.”

She added, “But as you grow as a parent, you realize they do have their own schedule and it’s selfish of us to want to pull her out of bed to go somewhere. You have to find that balance.”

Even though the TV personality has found a comfortable groove for herself and her family, she admits she’s still too apologetic about her parenting and traveling style.

“I think we get stuck in our own heads and worried about pleasing other people,” she said. “You look around and realize that everyone has their headsets on, she’s not screaming or kicking seats, etc. You’ve got to either roll with it or deal with the anxiety of it. We choose to roll with it."