Newlywed Jinger Duggar recently stepped out wearing an outfit so risque, card-carrying members of Duggar Nation promptly lost their minds.
Seriously. You are not going to believe that a member of the Duggar family, married or not, went out in public exposing this much skin …
Yes, that’s Jinger Duggar wearing shorts. Shorts!
Normally, a cute 23-year-old girl wearing shorts is hardly news, but in this case it’s literally unprecedented, so that’s the Duggars for you.
Skirts and dresses, and long ones at that.
Throughout her entire life, Jinger and the rest of the Duggar family have lived by that modest dress code and total intolerance of pants.
Jinger, who moved out of the Duggar compound in Arkansas and now lives in Texas after marrying Jeremy Vuolo last fall, looks to be over it.
Parading around town in knee-length shorts and a pair of Keds, Jinger’s seemingly inconsequential picture has roiled Duggar fans nationwide.
We are 100 percent serious that no Duggar female has ever worn shorts in public, nor have they donned any tempting, form-hugging pants.
Jinger’s sisters, Jill and Jessa, have each been photographed wearing snow pants while sledding, but that is nothing like this event.
Their mother, Michelle Duggar, has been outspoken in the past about why she and her daughters dress modestly in skirts and dresses.
“My daughters are the second generation of modest dressing in this family,” she has said. “They’ve grown up being dressed modestly.”
Praising this “feminine apparel,” she says “I’ve told my daughters this has been a joyful journey for me to learn what my Lord has called me to.”
“I feel like the Lord is impressing upon me that I should be modest in what I wear [and] defining who I am as a woman by choosing to wear dresses and skirts.”
Saying she is inspired by the Bible, Michelle adds that “our interpretation was that from the neck down to the knee should be covered.”
“By keeping those private areas covered, there’s not any ‘defrauding’ going on,” the matriarch says, going on to explain:
“My kids have all been taught that the definition of defrauding as stirring up desires that cannot be righteously fulfilled.”
“We don’t believe in defrauding others by the way we dress.”
Michelle is serious about enforcing her family’s dress code, as evidenced by holding them to it even in situations you would not expect.
One of those being Joy-Anna Duggar’s workout attire … in which she wears a skirt over loose-fitting workout pants while lifting weights:
Talk about going to great lengths.
Jill refused to wear a standard firefighter’s uniform while working as a volunteer firefighter EMT, modifying the pants into a skirt as well.
The Duggar family also believes that women’s shoulders should not be shown off in public settings because “they may arouse men.”
Raw, uncut shoulders.
Even Duggar family swimming attire is remarkably un-revealing, as evidenced by this classic photo of Jessa and Ben Seewald in 2015.
Any hopes of seeing Jessa Duggar cleavage or even soft-core shoulder action was quickly dashed when she posted this poolside pic:
However, Jinger broke that rule during her honeymoon, wearing a loose-fitting, shoulder-revealing top during one of her video posts.
Perhaps she’s bucking this family tradition altogether.
Believe it or not, she was even seen wearing her hair in a ponytail and not the typical, Jim-Bob Duggar-approved long-flowing curls.
Of course, even by Duggar standards, she’s not technically “defrauding” anyone with the shorts, which still go down to Jinger’s knees.
There is no “stirring up desires [in men] that cannot be righteously fulfilled” here, either from the shorts or the fact that she’s married.
If Jeremy Vuolo finds himself in a perpetual state of arousal after seeing this, well, he and his wife are now free to act upon those desires.
The days of side hugs are long gone, people …
Naturally, the Duggar fan community went nuts over the shorts pic, with one fan writing “Wow, amazing!! Maybe Jinger finally is ‘free’!”
That quote comes to us from a member of Free Jinger, a forum actually named after Jinger Duggar and fans’ desire for her to be … free.
A Pickles and Hairspray Facebook fan adds:
“Looky! Jinger in shorts and she isn’t even swimming! It’s always nice to see a Duggar kid give the finger to their parents’ crazy restrictive rules!”
“Feel like this a major victory! Wearing SHORTS!!!” another fan commented, celebrating the end of a lifetime of sharing “modern modest” pics.
Victory or not, all of this begs the question:
Is Jinger doing this now because always she’s always been a rebel who has wanted to wear shorts and was forbidden to by her parents?
Is it because her husband Jeremy has told her that he wants her to wear shorts, and she’s obliging his more modern fashion preferences?
So many mysteries in these strange times.