Chrissy Teigen came under fire on social media this week after revealing in an interview that she chose her baby’s gender while undergoing in vitro fertilization to conceive her first child.
In an interview with People magazine published Wednesday, the 30-year-old supermodel and wife of musician John Legend revealed that she is expecting a baby girl with her husband this spring.
“I’ve made this decision,” Tiegen, who has spoken openly about her struggles to conceive, told the magazine. “Not only am I having a girl, but I picked the girl from her little embryo. I picked her and was like, ‘Let’s put in the girl.'”
“I think I was most excited and allured by the fact that John would be the best father to a little girl,” the cookbook author and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model added. “That excited me. It excited me to see … just the thought of seeing him with a little girl. I think he deserves a little girl. I think he deserves that bond. A boy will come along. We’ll get there too, so it’s not like we really have to pick. But he definitely is very lucky to have a little girl. And this girl is going to be so completely lucky to have John as her papa — it’s crazy!”
After the interview was published, Teigen took to Twitter to defend herself as social media users criticized the model for the highly controversial gender-selection practice.
Teigen has generated controversy on Twitter before: she quit the social media service in October 2014 shortly after making a poorly-timed joke following a shooting in Canada:
In December, the model got into a heated Twitter feud with Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump after she called him a “tw*t.”
In an interview with Us Weekly in August, Tiegen asked her detractors not to tag her in their negative tweets.
“It’s almost like f*cking walking up to somebody, or going to somebody’s house, knocking on the door and being like, ‘You’re fat,’” Teigen told Us Weekly, referring to those who tag her in insulting posts on Twitter and Instagram.”I don’t know if they think they’re ballsy or what. But if you’re going to speak negatively about me, just do me a favor and don’t tag me in it.”