Jessa Duggar has been stepping into her own light and finding her way since leaving the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) — and that includes shifting her style.
The Counting On alum, 33, revealed during the Wednesday, October 28, of “The Unplanned Podcast” that she decided to wear pants well before she and husband Ben Seewald left the Christian fundamentalist organization founded in 1961.
“We already had discussions about our own personal convictions on, like, dress standards before we were married,” Duggar recalled. “And I had already bought jeans and stuff like that when we were engaged.”
Jessa’s parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, raised their 19 children in the IBLP, which is known for its strict and at times controversial teachings. One of the most notable rules is that girls and women are only allowed to wear dresses and skirts.
Seewald, 31, noted that while his wife is wearing jeans and pants more publicly now, her sister Jinger Duggar paved the way.
Jessa chimed in to say, Jinger, 32, was the first of her siblings to make that statement “as far as, like, living out the convictions of wearing that in a family setting.”
Jessa, who is pregnant with her and Seewald’s seventh baby, noted that she chose to keep her style choices more under wraps following the pair’s August 2014 engagement. (The couple, who wed that November, already share sons Spurgeon, 10, Henry, 9, George, 2, and Eddie, 15 months, and daughters Ivy, 7, and Fern, 5.)
“I chose — just when I was around my family, out of respect for them — to not wear certain things at their house or whatever,” Jessa told podcast hosts Matt and Abby Howard. “I don’t know if that was right or wrong.”
Seewald explained that as a couple, they’ve been focused on “trying to figure out what’s the balance.”
He said they’ve never wanted to “be in your face” with their opposition to certain ways they were raised, especially when it comes to Jessa’s family.
“But also there’s nothing in the Bible about you [having] to wear jeans or skirts,” Seewald pointed out. “We’ve just tried to build up that relationship capital as much as we can and show, like, even if we do things differently, you can’t doubt the love that we have and the honor that we show.”
Jessa agreed with her husband, saying that her decision to wear pants or listen to different types of music stems from her growth as a woman and mother.
“I feel like every person can get up in their head and [go], ‘Oh, the thing that I’m going through with forging my own path, like, being my own person, is so hard. I’m the only person going through this,’” she said. “Or like, ‘My generation is the only one going through this.’”
The reality star noted that blazing your own trail is all part of becoming an adult.
“At some point you have to realize this is not some foreign, odd thing. You are adulting. That’s what adulting is,” Jessa continued. “You’re growing up. You’re coming into your own beliefs. It’s not going to be identical. It’s not going to mirror what your parents did.”
Jessa added, “I don’t know anybody who lives their life 100 percent as an adult or as a parent in the exact same way that their parents did.”
When it comes to why she left IBLP, she hinted that her beliefs no longer aligned with the majority of the group’s teachings.
“My personality, I’m kinda an eat-the-meat, spit-out-the-bones kinda person,” Jessa said, explaining that “we’re supposed to have discernment.”
She explained people should listen and then “compare anything we hear and take it back to what does God say? And take it back to the word of God and throw out anything that’s not good.”
