In June 2023, the documentary miniseries Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets premiered on Prime Video. After millions of people watched that stunning series, they walked away marveling at the idea that Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar are more powerful than they seem.
On top of accumulating a lot of clout in society, it has also become clear that Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar have a truly impressive fortune. Unlike her famous parents, it turns out their daughter Jinger Duggar Vuolo has lost a lot of money because of her family's controversial beliefs.
How Did Jinger Duggar Vuolo Lose Money?
In the year 2008, the show that eventually would be known as 19 Kids and Counting premiered on TLC. Thanks to the show's immense popularity with viewers, it arguably became the network's most talked-about series.
Over several years, many people came to believe that the Duggar family was extremely wholesome, and they looked up to them. As a result, the Duggar family was able to find many new ways to make money including publishing books and they of course cashed in on their television contracts.
As time has gone on, many celebrities have found new opportunities to make money. Perhaps the best example of that is the fact that many of today's young stars get paid a lot of money to sponsor products on social media.
Back when the Duggar family first rose to fame, nobody would have believed members of the family would associate themselves with products sold by big companies. However, by the year 2020, Jinger Duggar Vuolo sought to do that by following in the footsteps of other celebrities' sponsored social media posts.
Unfortunately for Duggar Vuolo, her plans to make money from social media wound up mostly falling apart. The reason why Duggar Vuolo couldn't make a living on social media is simple, some observers wanted to hold her to account for her family's beliefs.
As of the time of this post, Duggar Vuolo has 1.4 million followers on Instagram. With Duggar Vuolo regularly posting wholesome-looking photos of herself with her family on her account, it also seems likely her following will only grow from here.
It should go without saying that most companies would be overjoyed to pitch their products to even a fraction of that many people. Despite that, Duggar Vuolo's Instagram account doesn't have too many sponsored posts on it.
As anyone who has followed Duggar Vuolo's Instagram account over the years will already know, she has tried several times to find sponsors. In 2020, she found a company that believed in her since she posted several Instagram stories about a product.
On March 8th, 2020, Duggar Vuolo posted stories about how much she loved her new rug that was sold by Ruggable. The company prides itself on manufacturing rugs that are machine washable and Duggar Vuolo did her best to inform her followers of that.
Then, almost as quickly as Duggar Vuolo's Instagram stories about Ruggable were posted, all mentions of the company on her account disappeared. By March 10th, 2020, Ruggable had ended its association with Duggar Vuolo, and a post on the subreddit r/DuggarsSnark took credit for that.
A screengrab of a direct message sent by Ruggable was shared to the subreddit. By clicking on the post titled “Ruggable is ending their partnership with Jingle!”, Reddit users could read what the company wrote. As the post revealed, Ruggable abandoned their deal with Jinger because of being made aware of her past statements.
“Thank you for informing us about this. We were not aware of any previous remarks, supported organizations or religious affiliations related to Jinger and her family. This is a complete oversight on our part and we sincerely apologize as their family views do not in any way reflect our own."
The direct message continued, "We take great pride in partnering with people who not only support our brand, but also share similar values including showing respect for all religions, races, ethnicities and s*xual orientation. We will not be continuing our partnership with Jinger and we have made our team aware of the feedback we have received."
Unfortunately for Duggar Vuolo, that kind of thing had already happened in the past. In 2019, Duggar Vuolo started a social media partnership with a company called Fonuts. Initially, Duggar Vuolo appeared on Fonuts' social media accounts, and she posted about them on hers.
Just like what happened with Ruggable, Duggar Vuolo's involvement with Fonuts then disappeared. After Fonuts deleted the content related to Duggar Vuolo from their account, the company's creator Nancy Truman and her husband and partner Thom Furtado issued a public apology. The couple later deleted the apology.
“We apologize for our recent poor choice of promotional partner. We were shocked and dismayed to learn about who we were associating with. We recognize we really made a mistake by not properly researching them. We have ended our partnership with Jinger Vuolo and the company that introduced us."
What Has Jinger Duggar Vuolo Said About Her Family's Beliefs?
For years after the Duggar family rose to fame, every member of the family praised their beliefs anytime they spoke in public. On top of that, when the first of Josh Duggar's many extremely disturbing misdeeds came to light, his sisters who were his victims publicly came to his defense.
Over the last few years, that has all started to change as several members of the Duggar family have spoken out against their upbringings. The most notable example of that is Jill Duggar Dillard who has called out her father Jim Bob Duggar on many occasions.
Similar to her sister, Jinger Duggar Vuolo has also publicly called out some of the beliefs she was raised to hold dear. In January 2023, Duggar Vuolo spoke to People about what it was like to be brought up following the Institute in Basic Life Principles' teachings which were created by Bill Gothard.
"[Gothard's] teachings in a nutshell are based on fear and superstition and leave you in a place where you feel like, 'I don't know what God expects of me'. The fear kept me crippled with anxiety. I was terrified of the outside world."
"His teachings were so harmful, and I'm seeing more of the effects of that in the lives of my friends and people who grew up in that community with me. There are a lot of cult-like tendencies." Duggar Vuolo continued, "The teaching I grew up under was harmful, it was damaging, and there are lasting effects.
Given how loyal to Gothard's teachings her family always was, Duggar Vuolo's comments are truly remarkable. That said, it is important to note that Duggar Vuolo hasn't specifically taken back many of the things that her detractors resent her for. With that in mind, there is no telling what would happen if Duggar Vuolo tried to get a new sponsorship.
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