Lydia Plath revealed there “wasn’t a heavy emphasis” on modest dressing growing up — but the girls did shy away from showing too much skin.
“Yes, we grew up wearing skirts and dresses for the most part,” Lydia, 21, said on the Wednesday, September 10, episode of the “Jinger & Jeremy” podcast.
The Welcome to Plathville star explained, “The best way I can describe it is my mom just went shopping for us when we were little because, you know, 5 year olds don’t shop for themselves most of the time. So we grew up wearing dresses our mom bought us.”
Lydia noted that her mother, Kim Plath, didn’t always wear skirts or dresses. “My mom would wear pants,” she said, but added, “It was never off limits.”
She further explained, “When I was 13, 14 [I] started picking out my own clothes and stuff” and shorts weren’t taboo.
“Especially [if I was] gonna be out in the summer or out in the heat in the summertime painting for five hours every day, yeah, I’m going to get some shorts,” Lydia said. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, my goodness, I’m wearing shorts.’ It was like, ‘OK, well this is going to call for this.’”
Lydia added that as she “grew up finding” her “own style,” there was a “stage” where she didn’t know how to necessarily assimilate.
“I was uncomfortable in certain things. Like dresses that were too showy, or shorts that were too short,” she remembered. “It took a long time to find my style.”
Lydia noted that while it took time to find what looked good on her, “It wasn’t a mindset I had to shift.”
Lydia was raised in a religious household alongside her eight siblings — Ethan, Hosanna, Micah, Moriah, Amber, Isaac, Mercy and Cassia — with conservative values. While the family hasn’t openly commented on their exact belief system, many speculate that they are Fundamentalist Christians.
Lydia confirmed on Wednesday that she wasn’t raised “IBLP,” which stands for Institute in Basic Life Principles, like fellow reality TV family The Duggars.
She explained that there are some similarities between the two families, including their sheltered upbringings, but her parents raised them by saying things like, “The Lord led us to homeschool.”
“It’s not like [they said], ‘This is the scripture,’” Lydia added. “And this is how, like, if we step outside of this, we’re outside of God’s will.”
Welcome to Plathville airs on TLC Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET.
