Mady Gosselin Says People Calling Her & Her Siblings 'Damaged Child Stars' Harms Them Now That They're Older
Mady Gosselin from "Jon & Kate Plus Eight" is tired of being pigeonholed by her parents' show.
Perhaps no reality show in the 2000s and 2010s brought as much drama as TLC's "Jon & Kate Plus 8."
The show chronicled the life and family of Jon & Kate Gosselin and their eight children, twins Mady and Cara, now 22, and sextuplets Collin, Hannah, Leah, Alexis, Aaden and Joel, now 18.
The show rocketed the family to international stardom, but the impacts of fame quickly took a toll on the family, leading to a nasty public divorce between the Gosselins that became a media circus.
And apparently, the television fishbowl in which they lived has turned into a social media fishbowl in recent years.
And the Gosselins' daughter Mady has had enough of the public's lack of boundaries.
Mady Gosselin took to TikTok to call out people who label her and her siblings 'damaged child stars' because of 'Jon & Kate Plus 8.'
The show, which later became just "Kate Plus 8" following Jon Gosselin's alleged infidelities and the couple's 2009 divorce, ended in 2017.
But the scrutiny the Gosselin's lived under—with no choice in the matter, in the case of the Gosselin kids—lives on, according to Mady Gosselin, now a senior at Syracuse University.
Mady Gosselin says TikTok commenters' 'rhetoric' about her and her siblings being 'damaged' harms them.
Gosselin revealed that she has been receiving hate mail since the age of 6, and now boundary-violating comments on TikTok have become just as pervasive.
The comment she was responding to has since been deleted, but it's likely it was in response to a very cute TikTok Gosselin posted showing screenshots of funny text messages between her and her sisters.
The comment implied Gosselin's parents had driven a "wedge" between her and her other siblings to "tear [them] all apart"—a presumptuous claim that had nothing to do with the TikTok in the first place.
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"Whatever you want to say about my life, my family, my parents, whatever, is not your business," Gosselin responded.
"Perpetuating the narrative that we are damaged," Gosselin went on to say, "...is extremely harmful, as myself and my siblings are going out in the world and will be functioning members of society with careers."
Gosselin also called out the long-held notion that present or former public figures aren't entitled to privacy.
"There seems to be a public consensus that if you're in the public eye your entire life belongs to the public," she said, "and that is in no way true."
"You are not entitled to information...about my life. What I share on social media is my choice, and you are not entitled to anything more than that."
Mady Gosselin finds the prying especially annoying given that she says the Gosselin kids are doing great.
"Regardless of whatever narrative you've created in your head, my siblings are doing so well," Gosselin said. "They're amazing people. They're smart, they're kind, they're driven students, they're working hard..."
Mady's twin sister Cara attends Fordham University in New York City, while Aaden, Alexis, Joel and Leah Gosselin live with Kate Gosselin in North Carolina, where she relocated and has resumed her pre-TV nursing career.
Kate also recently returned to reality television, appearing on Fox's "Special Forces: World's Toughest Test" reality competition series.
Mady has even used her skills as a film and screen studies major at Syracuse to help produce her mom's interviews for the show, as she revealed in a funny TikTok about her mom's lack of tech skills.
Still, all families have problems, and the Gosselins are no exception.
Collin, Hannah and Jon Gosselin have all recently gone public about their estrangements from Kate Gosselin and some of their other siblings.
Hannah and Collin Gosselin, now 18, chose to live with Jon Gosselin in Pennsylvania, where the family filmed their reality shows, after a long custody battle between Jon and Kate.
In recent sit-downs with "Entertainment Tonight," Collin and Hannah revealed the tensions that linger between them and their other siblings, as well as their mother.
Still, at the end of the day, families are complicated, and even public figures are entitled to a modicum of privacy—especially those who had no say in becoming famous in the first place, like the Gosselin kids.
As Mady Gosselin put it in her TikTok, "the internet shouldn't be just a free-for-all where you can bully everyone that you see... You should choose to be kind to people."
"I bet your life will be so much more enjoyable because of it!"
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.