Jinger Duggar Remembers ‘Crying’ When a Close Friend Started Wearing Pants: ‘I Was Brokenhearted’

Before Jinger Duggar began wearing pants herself, she had a hard time seeing her friends make the switch.

The Counting On alum, 31, and her husband, Jeremy Vuolo, were joined by her sister Joy-Anna Duggar on the Wednesday, April 16, episode of the “Jinger & Jeremy” podcast to discuss the Duggar family’s headline-making modesty practices. (Jinger and her siblings were raised in an ultraconservative Christian household and followed strict rules, one of which included women and girls wearing skirts and dressing modestly.)

Vuolo, 37, pointed out that while the family’s beliefs seemed like “another world” to those on the outside, many people in the Duggars’ community followed similar guidelines. “For you to do anything other [than that] was like a bombshell,” he said.

Jinger agreed that “it was so normal” for her and her sisters — and even their mom, Michelle Duggar — to dress modestly. “You kind of start to not think twice about it until you are surrounded with other people who are conducting their lives differently … and then that’s something where you start to think more about, ‘OK, why do I do what I do?’” she added.

Joy-Anna, 27, noted that there were also people in their lives that branched out from the modest uniform earlier on. “To me, it was a big deal when somebody that always wore skirts started wearing pants,” she said. “Then I was like, ‘Oh, well they know better.’ That was my attitude behind it [at the time].”

Her sister felt similarly. “I remember when a couple close friends started wearing pants and I was, like, so brokenhearted over it,” Jinger recalled. “I remember crying over one friend just thinking, ‘Why are they doing that?’ Without even asking or hearing them out as to why.”

While Jinger has been wearing pants for some time, Joy-Anna revealed that she only took the leap two years ago. Her husband, Austin Forsyth, and their children played a role in the decision.

“We wanted to know 100 percent, ‘Is this something we’re OK with for our family?’” she explained.

Joy-Anna went on to assure fans that she has no problem with the way she and her siblings were raised. “Nothing held me back,” she said. “If I wanted to ride a bike, if I wanted to do anything, I could. I don’t have any [regrets], like, ‘Oh man, that was horrible.’ … I know everybody’s different, but for me, wearing pants wasn’t that big of a pressure, I guess.”

She added that Forsyth, whom she wed in 2017, wants her to “wear whatever [she’s] comfortable with.”

Jinger, meanwhile, has been outspoken about her own fashion choices since releasing her 2021 memoir, The Hope We Hold. “Modesty was a huge topic in our house, and we believed that wearing skirts instead of pants was a central part of being modest. But I wanted to discover for myself what the Bible had to say,” she wrote at the time, revealing that she came to believe modesty wasn’t “only about what you wear” but was also “about the position of your heart.”

In her book, Jinger noted that she “didn’t want to hurt” her family with her new approach. Last year, she recalled the first time she told her parents about wearing pants.

“I think the big thing is just because we are in the public eye, I knew that there was gonna be so much that would blow up,” she said on the “Unplanned” podcast. “If it’s a paparazzi photo while we are out that’s taken … let’s just be ready for it. I’m just gonna tell them and then that way they know and they know it came from a heart of, ‘Hey, this is what I feel convicted of or don’t anymore.’ And they can just know from my heart and then we’ll move on.”