It was a monumental moment for Jinger Duggar when she wore pants in front of her family for the first time.
“It was maybe a couple years after I had started wearing pants,” Jinger, 31, said on the Wednesday, June 12, episode of the “Unplanned” podcast of the conversation with her parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar. “The first few times I went back I was not wearing pants. I wore a skirt just to honor [them].”
She continued, “That’s a big deal for my family, and my heart is not to rub anything in anyone’s face and be like, ‘I’m doing this. I’m doing my own thing.’”
While her wardrobe change may seem “insignificant” to some, the 19 Kids and Counting alum explained that it was “massive” for her family. “I wanted to let them know, regardless of how things go, I just want to be able to share that,” she said.
Now, Jinger doesn’t feel the need to tell her parents about everything she’s choosing to do differently in her life. But she chose to talk to them about wearing pants because that was “one of the first things” she altered.
“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. “If it’s a paparazzi photo while we are out that’s taken, ‘OK that happens all the time, so 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.”
Ultimately, Jinger said she wanted to show her parents that she “loved and cared” about them even if they have their “differences.”
“I’m gonna wear pants,” she said. “But it’s not to make them mad.”
Jinger opened up about her decision to add pants into her closet in her 2021 memoir, The Hope We Hold.
“My mom had always dressed us girls in skirts and dresses, a standard that was taken from Deuteronomy 22:5, which says, ‘A woman shall not wear a man’s garment,’” she wrote at the time. “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.”
As Jinger began her life with her husband, Jeremy Vuolo, she began “digging” deeper into the meaning behind some Bible passages. (The couple, who wed in 2016, went on to welcome daughters Felicity and Evangeline in 2018 and 2020, respectively.)
She realized her own interpretation of modesty wasn’t “only about what you wear,” but also “about the position of your heart.” Jinger also “never found a passage specifically forbidding women from wearing pants.”
After making the switch, Jinger recalled feeling “no inner conflict” because she knew she “wasn’t disobeying a biblical command” by wearing pants.
