Alison Roman says Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen are 'sellouts', fans slam her for targeting women of color
Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen are icons of sorts, who are well-loved by the public. While Chrissy is well-loved for her witty commentary, Marie took the whole world by storm with the Marie Kondo method of cleaning. She helped people across the world to reduce the clutter and embrace minimalism. So, when you decide to publicly target these two women and making inflammatory comments about them, you can rest assured that the backlash from the public will outweigh any possible success. The New York Times food section columnist Alison Roman seems to have learned this the hard way.
Alison is well known in the lifestyle and culinary world for her bold and unique recipes. She, however, landed herself in soup, when she made some scathing comments about Marie and Chrissy during an interview with New Consumer. While talking about how she doesn’t want to be a ‘sellout’ by associating herself with various brands just for the sake of it or expanding her business empire, Roman decided to cite the examples of Marie and Chrissy as ‘sellouts’.
She criticized Marie for "capitalizing on her fame and making stuff that you can buy". She said, “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… I’m like, damn, b*tch, you f**ing just sold out immediately! Someone’s like “you should make stuff,” and she’s like, “Okay, slap my name on it, I don’t give a sh*t!”
“That’s the thing — you don’t need a ton of equipment in your kitchen to make great food. “For the low, low price of $19.99, please buy my cutting board!” Like, no. Find the stuff that you love and buy it. Support businesses and makers. It feels greedy. Unless something just simply didn’t exist that I wish existed, but that would make an inventor, which I’m not,” added the columnist.
Roman then moved on to attack Chrissy in the same breath. She 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. I don’t aspire to that. But like, who’s laughing now? Because she’s making a ton of f***ing money.”
Fans were less than impressed with Alison's tone towards Chrissy and Marie. A lot of fans slammed her picking on WOC. A fan wrote, “Alison Roman sure has a problem with successful WOC.”
Another fan tweeted, “It's bold and... not funny? This interview made me lose a lot of respect for Alison Roman. There's never any excuse for mocking non-English speakers/accents.”
“Alison Roman singles out Marie Kondo / Chrissy Teigen as sellouts, yet takes no issue w/ white women capitalizing on lifestyle content, asking "Does the world need another Goop?" when reflecting on her own brand. Says a lot about who she thinks is allowed to build global empires,” expressed a fan.
Several fans felt that her idea of calling out Marie and Chrissy instead of someone like Martha Stewart and Rachel Ray reeked of racism. A fan shared, “So Alison Roman is just gonna attack 2 Asian women and not say anything against Martha Stewart or Rachel Ray, the latter who literally peddles every single damn thing under the sun? lmao white women sure are something!”
Another fan echoed similar thoughts with, “Alison Roman is a complete b*tch. Funny how she only has a problem with women of color capitalizing off of their brands. Rachel Ray and Martha Stewart must have skipped her mind.”
Chrissy Teigen also tweeted her disappointment with Alison, saying, “This is a huge bummer and hit me hard. I have made her recipes for years now, bought the cookbooks, supported her on social (media) and praised her in interviews. I even signed on to executive produce the very show she talks about doing in this article."