Hygiene apparently wasn’t a big deal in the Duggar household, because, according to Joy and Jinger Duggar, their husbands were shocked by the girls’ lack of cleanliness after their weddings.
Joy recently appeared on The Jinger & Jeremy Podcast to discuss what surprised them after getting married. As ‘Counting On’ fans know, both Joy and Jinger married young (Joy was 19 and Jinger was 22), and they lived at home at Casa de Duggar until they were hitched.
According to Joy, her now-husband Austin Forsyth was unhappy with Joy’s lack of hygiene even before they got married. Joy admitted that, prior to marrying Austin, she didn’t take daily showers or wash her hair frequently.
“Some days you don’t feel dirty,” she insisted. “…I did not care that much. [I was like], ‘Hygiene? Ehh.'”
When asked what the biggest adjustment she had to make once she was married, Joy said it was realizing she now had to shower every night to make Austin happy.
“That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?” she said.
Joy went on to say that— when she was living at the Duggar Compound pre-marriage— Austin had to inform her that she would need to consistently wash herself once they got hitched.
“Jokingly, he was like, ‘You know when we get married, we’re gonna shower every night! We’re gonna be clean!'” she said. “He let me know his expectations and I was like, ‘Ok, fine.'”
Joy insisted that, even now, Austin is a “germaphobe” because he washes his hands frequently and sometimes showers twice a day in the summer.
Jinger also stated that the Duggar Family’s hygiene habits (or lack thereof) were a surprise to her husband, Jeremy Vuolo, when they got married.
“The hygiene thing has improved with Jeremy [in my life],” Jinger insisted. “…he has improved my hygiene majorly. We won’t even get into all the hygiene things because it’s too much to talk about.”
“I still don’t wash my hair [often], Joy,” Jinger admitted.
“The hygiene thing, it’s massive in [Jeremy’s] eyes,” Jinger said.
Jinger and Joy seemed a bit reluctant to elaborate on what other hygiene-related things their husbands were unhappy about upon marrying them.
“We’re not going there yet!” added Joy.
This is not the first time Jinger and Joy spoke about the Duggar Family’s lack of showering. During a 2024 episode of Jinger’s podcast, Jinger and Joy stated that getting a regular, hot shower was a rarity when they were growing up, due to the fact that so many people were living in very small homes.
“I think when we were younger that was more of a problem because we only had two bathrooms in most of our rental homes,” Jinger said. “There was constantly a line and the water would not stay hot very long, so if you wanted to have a hot shower, you needed to be one of the first two or three in there.”
You can listen to Joy and Jinger’s full podcast episode here.
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