Despite being a grown woman who allegedly runs her own successful business, Jana Duggar is not an “adult” in Jim Bob’s eyes.
According to the doctrine of the cult, church, and family, Jana remains part of Jim Bob’s household until she is married off — to a husband of his choosing.
Some of her sisters are allowed to “break” Jim Bob’s strict rules because their new husbands permit it.
But when Jana is showing this much leg, one has to wonder if the extreme Duggar lifestyle is finally coming apart at the seams.
Jana Duggar is judicious about what she actually posts on social media.
(Some fans still speculate about how much control she actually has over the account, but that’s neither here nor there)
She does pop up sometimes on other people’s pages, which happened after she attended a friend’s wedding.
Jana wore a light blue dress under a tan jacket.
While the jacket kept her arms from being bared to the world, the dress only comes to just below her knees.
When seated, it falls above her knees, baring much more leg than anyone is accustomed to seeing from a Duggar daughter — especially one who is still living at home.
The photo was shared on the Instagram Story of Jana’s friend, Emily Ann Raynes.
Jana’s sister-in-law, Hannah Duggar, is also in the photo, wearing a more strictly modest dress of a similar color.
And Jana’s brother, Jeremiah, was also present for this sensational baring of Jana’s knees.
Obviously, knees are just joints. They’re not sexual, they’re not illicit, and if we’re being honest, most of them are deeply ugly.
They are one of the first body parts that people begin to loathe as they enter their thirties and forties, and serve few if any direct roles in sex.
However, for Jana to flash hers to the camera, out in public, and in front of her brother … of course fans did not ignore it. How could they?
From the Duggar family’s ominous debut onto reality television, the dress code drew almost as much attention as the ever-expanding brood of offspring.
Part of the issue is the absurd (and overwhelmingly sexist) rules themselves.
While men are relegated to awkward dad jeans and unflattering shirts, women had more rules — on their hairstyles, makeup, pants, shirts, and more.
Part of that was always to avoid showing skin or outlining the form of their bodies.
This doesn’t simply refer to cleavage or crop tops or cameltoe or leggings, but extremely normal clothes — like shorts.
For a Duggar daughter to bare her arms or more than a few inches of leg was forbidden … at least, it used to be.
More shocking than the rules themselves was the sick, twisted rationale behind it, as explained by Michelle all of those years ago.
If someone were to see Jana’s legs and desire her carnally, Jana would not, per her fundamentalist beliefs, be permitted to act upon it — even if she wanted to.
Because she is not married to the man who saw the devil’s appendages, cult logic says that she would have enticed him to want things that she could not give — and thus “defrauded” him.
That deranged way of thinking defined so much of the Duggar family’s lives, and ties into rape culture, misogyny, and more.
(Josh is not the only sexual predator in their cult — he is only the most famous one who’s been caught)
Maybe Jana is old enough that her parents have a hard time stopping her from “defrauding” passersby. Or maybe they have bigger things to worry about these days.
