Duggar Feet: Unpacking The Duggars Weird Preference For Pedicures

In a world of side-hugs and monitored texts, the Duggar girls have to get human contact from somewhere, and apparently it's through their feet. No joke, one of their most beloved life luxuries is getting their toenails done, and the obsession is so real that Jill got a pedicure after her water broke. She didn't even tell anyone she was in labor during the salon trip. Like, that's insane.

And while there's nothing wrong with pedicures — hey, we enjoy massage chairs and emerald green nails too — it is weird that the Duggars focus on just that. Not manicures: it's specifically pedis, all day, every day. And yes, that phrasing sounds jarring in the larger context of Duggar lore.

So why exactly do the Duggar ladies love their pedicures? Is it their sexual repression manifesting in a strange, ritualistic way? We have a few theories…

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The Duggar girls get pedicures as a substitute for affection.

When you are a single Duggar girl (Jana) living in a single Duggar world (populated only by Jana) there aren't a lot of opportunities for healthy human contact. Even in the courtship phase, you're lucky to get a side-hug hello. So an easy loophole to get genuine skin-on-skin action is by booking a pedicure. Not only do you get ten artfully decorated toes, but you get a whole rainbow of treatments for your legs. The milky pink lotion. The blue exfoliating scrub. Those weird green squares with the gel. Lots of rubbing, lots of touching, lots of colorful products.

So facing a lack of healthy physical contact, they turn over to bought touches at the salon. That's profoundly sad, but twisted a different way, a little gross…

The Duggar girls get pedicures as a sexual outlet.

This is creepy to think about when it comes to the younger girls, but as a whole, the Duggars have a very murky and disturbing history with touch (see: the entire Josh Duggar molestation scandal). Let's just posit it this way: feet have a loooong history of being eroticized, and foot fetishes are absurdly common. Like, our journalism careers have forced us into creating some weird celebrity foot fetishes, so trust us on this. In fact, Jill and Jessa have even landed on some foot fetish sites.

So if the Duggar girls can't get a full-frontal hug, can't kiss, can't even hold hands, they can only channel their sexual energies through one outlet: foot massages.

Does that mean that a whole group of sisters have a shared foot fetish and are getting their kicks that way? No, dear God, we hope not. But we can't un-think this, no matter how many times we try to clean the concept out of our brain.

The Duggar girls get pedicures because their cosmetic options are sort of limited.

Look, Duggar women are never going to go out on a sexy MarketPlace Grill date wearing a bold lip or plunging neckline. Plain is the name of the game, unless you count Jinger breaking free with pants every once in a while. So while they can't get super extravagant with their look, they can treat themselves with a fresh new OPI color. That's…something, right?

Likewise, the Duggar girls get pedicures because it's one area where they get freedom of expression.

Hey, nail art is bigger than ever and a great way to show some off a little bit (like, literally a little bit) of personality. The Duggar girls, near identical with their modest ensembles and Rapunzel hair, could use pedicures as a way to get ~wild.~ There's at least one instance where a heavily pregnant Jessa got pedis and PSLs with her mother-in-law and debuted some hot pink polka dot toes. Crazytown!

This theory is perhaps the most innocuous, and we'd love to think it's as simple at that. And yet that doesn't explain why it's foot-specific.

The Duggars get pedicures because of, idk, some kind of religious thing.

Look, the Duggars are like the ultimate Fundie family so we can't discount this possibility. In the Bible passage John 13:1, Jesus washes his disciples' feet. Feet, in fact, play a large part in biblical lore. Remember that one story where like, a man is walking in the sand with God, and one set of footsteps disappear during the rough parts of his life? And he's like, "Yo, God, why did you abandon my during my struggles" and God's like, "No, no, my child, I was carrying you the entire time."

…so anyway…

We can't discount that maybe steering toward pedicures is just another Fundie thing, a modern washing-of-the-feet. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, after all.