In the nine months since Jinger Duggar married Jeremy Vuolo, the 23-year-old has undergone a number of major lifestyle changes.
For starters, Jinger and Jeremy moved to Texas, making her the first Duggar daughter to move out of Arkansas.
On top of that, Jinger began wearing pants, which may not sound like a big deal, but if you grew up in a household where a certain article of clothing is strictly forbidden, being granted permission to wear it for the first time must feel like a life-changing experience.
The Duggars live a strictly patriarchal lifestyle, which means that for as long as they live at home, the girls are under Jim Bob’s control.
And for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Jim Bob has a strict “floor-length skirts only” rule.
Once they marry and move out, however, Jim Bob cedes control of his daughters to their husbands – and it looks as though the pain of losing power is more intense than he’d expected.
As we reported earlier this week, sources close to the family say Jim Bob has been clashing with his sons-in-law over differences regarding matters of faith and lifestyle.
Many fans were shocked the first time Jinger posted a photo in which she wasn’t wearing Jim Bob-approved attire.
Interestingly, she’s posted several such pics in the weeks since, and she seems to be upping the ante each time.
We’ve now seen Jinger wearing shorts and relatively tight pants that almost certainly sent her father into conniptions.
It’s enough to make fans wonder:
Are Jinger and Jeremy posting these pics as a way of asserting their independence and sticking it to Jim Bob?
If you watch Counting On online, you know that Jinger and Jeremy’s engagement was no easy process, as Jim Bob forced his future son-in-law to jump through a number of hoops in order to gain his approval.
Jim Bob’s reasons for being so skeptical of Jeremy are unclear, but many fan theories have emerged.
Some believe Jim Bob feared that Jeremy would whisk his daughter away to Texas.
Others say he’d learned his lesson after losing control of his two older daughters to men with much more liberal belief systems.
But the likeliest explanation is that Jim Bob was wary of Jeremy’s religious views.
Vuolo is a Calvinist, a doctrine that Jim Bob has professed strong disapproval of in the past.
And it’s for that reason that many believe the frequency of posts in which Jinger is wearing pants amounts to a middle finger to Jim Bob.
Duggar kids are forced to be extremely subtle in their rebellion – but that doesn’t mean their intended targets don’t get the message clearly.
