The Duggars usually prefer to live just a few degrees away from The Handmaid’s Tale, a show that they would surely never watch because it’s part of sinful Western culture or something.
Amy Duggar King has always been something of an outsider in that family.
She’s a niece rather than a daughter, for one thing. She also enjoys worldly things like enjoying her life.
But you don’t normally expect to see any Duggars dressed like Amy is in the photo below.
Contrary to what a lot of xenophobes (among other types of bigots) think, you don’t need to look to foreign countries or cultures to find ideologies that oppress women.
You literally just have to look to the Duggars.
(Plus an alarming number of fans, pundits, politicians, and others.)
The Duggars follow a form of Christian Fundamentalism that places them on the fringe of society, even among fellow conservative Christians.
Ones who most certainly would be shocked at this:
As viewed through the lens of Duggar beliefs, women are essentially the property of their fathers and then, when married, belong to their husbands.
Oh, they might not phrase it exactly like that, but that’s how it goes.
Jim Bob calls all of the shots.
At least until they get married, which is why Amy is now able to share photos like the one shown above, posted to her Instagram.
This is a totally normal photo for those of us who live in our, um, "reprobate mainstream society" where women get (some) input over what they do with their bodies.
Instead of, you know, being nonstop incubators in a fertility cult.
But for the Duggars, this is scandalous.
Remember, this is a family where a woman wearing pants is controversial.
The harlot.
Like, girls-don’t-wear-pants was already considered old-fashioned in the 1930s.
But the attitude of the Duggars hails somewhat beyond that, before things like autonomy and reporting sexual predators to law enforcement were widely accepted.
Some historians would argue that the "yesteryear" that the Duggars seek to recreate never really existed as they imagine it.
It’s important to note that this isn’t Amy’s first time showing off her sinful skin-flesh.
Amy Duggar wore a bikini on her honeymoon with Dillon King.
It’s such a deviation from the beliefs of the Duggars that we almost wondered if we’d just dreamed it up, you know?
But she’s back at it again, being a person and deciding how to decorate her meat prison.
It’s almost like she’s her own person!
Amy and Dillon have had their share of marital issues, but they’ve taken steps to work through them.
Very public steps, we might add.
The Duggars aren’t strangers to conflict.
Jim Bob’s position as patriarch gives him a creepy level of authority over his children.
But once his daughters marry, they enter the custody of their lord husbands (ugh).
That’s resulted in some theological clashes between Jim Bob and his sons-in-law.
Sincerely held religious beliefs can be part of a person’s core identity, and they’re usually something worthy of respect.
But when someone tries to use them to control another person, that’s where we all have to draw the line.
Amy might no longer answer to Jim Bob’s whims, but how many of her cousins can say the same?
How many of her cousins will get to one day wear a bikini — if they choose to?