What to Know
When Joy-Anna and Jinger Duggar took over the podcast that Jinger once shared with her husband, Jeremy Vuolo, and rebranded it as Call Your Sister, it became a way for them to air out their thoughts and memories from when they were kids. Apparently, that includes Jinger getting candid about the many phases she went through as a sometimes moody teenager.
To be fair, a lot of what Joy-Anna and Jinger dealt with as kids and teens was documented on reality TV. But, in an episode of Call Your Sister, a clip of which was shared on TikTok, Jinger admits that she didn’t know who she was when she was a teenager. She also jokes that she had “multiple personality disorder.” But really, it seems to have been the inability to figure out who she is outside of being a Duggar daughter.
Jinger Duggar admitted to having many “phases” as a teenager.
@thecallyoursisterpod We love an honest friend 😂 #jingervuolo #callyoursister #relationships #marriage ♬ original sound – Call Your Sister Podcast
In the podcast clip on TikTok, Jinger talks to Joy-Anna about different “seasons” of life she went through as a teenager. Most of us experience these different personas too, but we do it without the pressure of TV cameras catching every moment. She also admits that she knows all about the cringiest moments from her teenage years that people roasted her for online at the time and afterward.
“I remember there was a season where I was really, really funny and I was, like, joking, extremely outgoing,” Jinger says in the TikTok. “Everybody who stepped foot into our house, I was like the first one to welcome them. And I was an over-the-top extrovert. That was a side of me and I was really goofy and silly.”
She then adds, “Prior to my teenage years, I remember even looking back at some of those old shows. That’s how I remember because I’ve seen a few where I’m like, wow, me, like in those stages, I had my thumbs up thing that I would do.”
She also says that she would be asked to make her little faces to the camera or to give what became her signature thumbs up gesture. But it sounds like Jinger didn’t exactly love the attention from that season of life.
One user commented on the video and wrote, “Jinger did have the best facial expressions in the family. I always thought it was her telling us that this was a fake as hell.”
Jinger explains in another video from the same podcast episode that, at some point, she got it into her head that, in order to be spiritual, she had to be mature. According to Jinger, she had to be able to not laugh at jokes. Some of her Godliness and studying of the Bible became almost performative for her.
She spoke out about the infamous ‘Free Jinger’ movement.
The different phases Jinger went through as a teen were not lost on people who watched 19 Kids and Counting and saw her grow up on reality TV. In fact, some users were so convinced that Jinger wanted to “break free” from her family’s fundamentalist Christian rules and values that a ‘Free Jinger’ movement was started online to somehow help Jinger branch out and start her own life.
In 2023, Jinger spoke to E! News about the Free Jinger movement and how she was aware of the online discourse surrounding her as a kid.
“I think I was probably one of the most avid rule followers in that setting, and I was like, ‘No, I don’t need to be freed from anything!'” Jinger told the outlet at the time. However, she added, “I appreciated the people at ‘Free Jinger.’ I think they had the best intentions in mind.”
She did write a memoir titled Becoming Free Indeed, after all.
Jinger and Joy-Anna Duggar were candid on their podcast about hygiene with spouses.
Jinger and Joy-Anna aren’t afraid to talk about pretty much anything on Call Your Sister, and no topics seem to be off limits. That includes, per a Reddit post, a discussion of personal hygiene, where Joy-Anna admitted she learned about it after she married her husband, Austin Forsyth.
“It absolutely speaks to the neglect they experienced growing up, the complete absence of any adult focused on their wellbeing,” one Reddit user commented on the post. “They had no one modeling good hygiene and enforcing daily routines, because the adults in that home were…otherwise engaged.”
Others agreed that it’s a shocking revelation, but Jinger and Joy-Anna seem to be unafraid to share a lot about their upbringing now.
