Jinger Duggar did not learn to swim as a child.
And yes, her family and cult’s infamous modesty rules played a role in robbing her of that experience.
That experience and so many others.
Jinger has since begun to learn how to swim. Now, she writes, it’s finally safe. Jim Bob’s rules would have put her at risk of drowning.
Jinger Duggar wanted to learn to swim as a child
In her new book, People Pleaser: Breaking Free From the Burden of Imaginary Expectations, Jinger Duggar wrote about how she was not allowed to learn how to swim.
Hijabi Muslims who seek to express their faith through their attire may wear various types of swimwear, like the burkini. But in the Duggar cult, IBLP rules dictate that women wear dresses or skirts that fall to their knees or further. And form-fitting clothing was forbidden.
“Since I was a little girl, I wanted to know what it felt like to push myself through the water, to swing my arms and kick my legs to keep me at the surface. But I didn’t know how,” Jinger penned. “Here’s what I did know for sure: Long skirts were not designed for learning how to swim.”
In her book, Jinger added a tongue-in-cheek line that “the laws of physics, gravity and buoyancy don’t play well with long skirts.”
Technically, Duggar rules didn’t specifically forbid her from learning to swim. Even so, the rules made it impossible. (That’s a great analogy for explaining discriminatory laws like voter suppression that are not, on paper, targeting any one demographic)
“Another way of saying ‘long-skirt swimmer’ is ‘one who sinks,’” she quipped. “And because long skirts were the only swimming fashion available to me as a kid, and because I had a thing about not wanting to sink, the skill of swimming was not something I picked up during that time.”
Not learning to swim altered Jinger Duggar’s relationship with water
She wrote that being around “water of all kinds” felt “scary” because she knew that she could not swim if she needed to. Anyone could slip and fall at any time. And many surprising places can flood with little warning.
However, Jinger doesn’t want the children in her growing family to feel this way.
“I want [my kids] to know how to swim. I want them to know that I can too,” Jinger affirmed. “But I was still so scared, thinking back to the few times I’d tried as a kid, the long skirt encasing my flailing legs.”
Since welcoming her children, Jinger has begun taking swimming lessons. However, she was initially “hesitant” to take the plunge (literally and metaphorically) because she was “scared to fail.”
This ties into the core elements of her book on her people-pleasing tendencies. Being overly concerned with other’s perceptions can have many causes, but it is a very common trait in people who come from toxic and abusive households.
“We’re still at it, my swimming lessons, taking it baby step by baby step (or maybe I should say baby lap by baby lap),” Jinger continued in her book.
Swimming is only the tip of the iceberg
In some ways that the Duggar children themselves have not addressed — not in any vlog post, memoir, or documentary interview — growing up in a fundamentalist cult robbed them of many facets of personhood.
They were unable to make real choices for themselves. In most cases, this lasted until they were married adults.
And, in Jinger’s case, one small piece of her story was that it was literally unsafe for her to learn to swim as a child. Usually, mandatory “modesty” policies are merely dehumanizing and oppressive. In this case, it was a safety hazard.
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