Jinger Duggar did not learn to swim as a child.
And yes, the notorious modesty rules of her family and sect played a role in robbing her of that experience.
that experience and so many Other.
Ginger has since started learning how to swim. Now, she writes, it is finally safe. Jim Bob’s rules could have put him in danger of drowning.
Jinger Duggar wanted to learn to swim as a child
In his new book, People pleaser: freeing yourself from the burden of imaginary expectationsJinger Duggar wrote about how she wasn’t allowed to learn to swim.
Hijabi Muslims who wish to express their faith through their attire may wear a variety of swimwear such as the burkini. But in the Duggar cult, IBLP rules dictate that women wear dresses or skirts that reach to their knees or even higher. And form-fitting clothing was prohibited.
“Since I was a little girl, I’ve wanted to know what it feels like to propel myself through water, swing my arms and kick my legs to keep myself at the surface. But I didn’t know how,” Ginger wrote. “Here’s what I knew for sure: Long skirts were not designed for learning to swim.”
Ginger adds a cheeky line to her book that “the laws of physics, gravity, and buoyancy do not work well with long skirts.”
Technically, the Duggar rules don’t specifically forbid her from learning to swim. Yet, the rules made this impossible. (This is a great analogy for explaining discriminatory laws like voter suppression that, on paper, don’t target any one demographic.)
He quipped, “Another way of saying ‘long-skirt swimmer’ is ‘the one who drowns’.” “And because long skirts were the only swimming fashion for me as a child, and because I had one thing in mind that I didn’t want to drown, the skill of swimming was not something I learned during that time.”
Not learning how to swim changed Jinger Duggar’s relationship with water
She wrote that being around “water of all kinds” made her feel “scary” because she knew she couldn’t swim if she needed to. Anyone can slip and fall at any time. and many more surprising Flooding can occur in places with little warning.
However, Ginger doesn’t want the children in her growing family to feel this way.
“I want [my kids] Knowing how to swim. I want them to know I can do it too,” Ginger confirmed. “But I was still very scared, thinking about the few times I had tried them on as a child, with long skirts that covered my shaky legs.”
Since welcoming her babies, Jinger has started taking swimming lessons. However, she was initially “hesitant” to take this step (literally and metaphorically) because she was “afraid to fail.”
This ties into the core elements of his book based on his people pleasing tendencies. There are many reasons for being overly concerned with the perceptions of others, but it is a very common trait in people who come from toxic and abusive homes.
“We’re still going at it, my swimming lessons, taking it baby steps by baby steps (or maybe I should say baby lap by baby lap),” Jinger continued in her book.
swimming is just the tip of the iceberg
In some ways, which the Duggar children themselves haven’t addressed — not in any vlog post, memoir, or documentary interview — growing up in a fundamentalist cult robbed them of many aspects of their personalities.
They were unable to make real choices for themselves. In most cases, this continued until they became married adults.
And, in Ginger’s case, a small part of her story was that it was really unsafe for her to learn to swim as a child. Typically, mandatory “decency” policies are simply inhumane and oppressive. In this case, it was a security threat.