Jinger Vuolo (née Duggar) dove deep into their family’s strict modesty rules about dressing, revealing how she broke down crying when a friend started wearing pants instead of skirts.

“I remember when a couple close friends started wearing pants and I was, like, so brokenhearted over it,” Jinger, 31, recalled on the Wednesday, April 16, episode of “The Jinger & Jeremy Podcast.”

“I remember crying over one friend just thinking, ‘Why are they doing that?’ Without even asking or hearing them out as to why,” she told husband Jeremy Vuolo and her sister Joy-Anna Forsyth (née Duggar).

Joy-Anna, 27, agreed that it was a huge shock to see people in their community turning away from skirts, which occasionally left her feeling judgmental.

“We knew a lot of people, we have people in our lives who wore pants, but to me it was a big deal when somebody who always wore skirts started wearing pants,” she shared. “Then I was like, ‘Oh, they know better.’ That was my attitude behind it of, ‘Well they’ve been raised right and they know better.'”

“I just had that spirit towards people,” she added, while Jinger agreed she had felt the same about friends wearing pants.

The Becoming Free Indeed author said that, “Looking back, it’s a good lesson to learn when it comes to Christian liberty,” and tolerance.

“As believers, we can be led in different ways and different times,” Jinger added. “At the same time, I think even with modesty, there needs to be a grace, therefore, to those who we don’t agree with.”

The sisters said the most common question they get is about wearing pants, as Jinger explained how wearing skirts and dresses was something the women in her family were known for thanks to the Duggar‘s TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting.

The People Pleaser author revealed how “a lot of thought and prayer” went into her decision to start wearing pants, while Joy-Anna said she had the same experience.

While Jinger ditched only wearing skirts years ago, Joy-Anna revealed she didn’t start wearing pants until two years ago. “It was right before I got pregnant with Gunnar,” she explained, referring to her 23-month-old son she shares with husband Austin Forsyth.

“Before that, I would wear sweatpants,” Joy-Anna noted, while adding that the decision to move away from skirts was something she discussed with Austin, 31, since they were “both raised the same way” where women wore skirts.

After a lot of thought, the pair came to the decision about Joy-Anna’s dressing habits.

“We wanted to know 100 percent, ‘Is this something we’re OK with for our family?’” she explained. Joy-Anna shared how the couple’s 4-year-old daughter, Evelyn, also factored into the decision.

“We want to raise her with good values and morals, and even more so, knowing that it doesn’t just impact me, but it impacts her too, was a lot of our reasoning as well,” she added about her decision to wear pants.

Joy-Anna revealed how wearing skirts wasn’t anything that changed her routine while growing up.

“Nothing held me back,” she said. “If I wanted to ride a bike, if I wanted to do anything, I could. I don’t have any [regrets], like, ‘Oh man, that was horrible.’ … I know everybody’s different, but for me, wearing pants wasn’t that big of a pressure, I guess.”

Jinger previously wrote about why she decided to stop wearing pants in her 2021 book, The Hope We Hold: Finding Peace in the Promises of God, which she cowrote with Jeremy, 37.

“My mom had always dressed us girls in skirts and dresses, a standard that was taken from Deuteronomy 22:5, which says, ‘A woman shall not wear a man’s garment,’ (ESV) and I never really questioned it,” she explained.

Jinger continued. “Modesty was a huge topic in our house, and we believed that wearing skirts instead of pants was a central part of being modest. But I wanted to discover for myself what the Bible had to say.”