These are my Venting Pants

I grew up in southern Louisiana, in an overgrown suburb about an hour outside of New Orleans. Confederate flags decorate my hometown like Christmas tree ornaments, global warming is a hoax, and, to be honest, I didn’t have a conversation with a black person until I was 13.

I left the south for an Ohio boarding school when I was 14, but as I've grown older, I've realized that a lot of the things I was taught in elementary/middle school were either unethical, inaccurate, or just plain wrong. These things have been on my mind a lot recently, since my experience forces me to realize that I'm not as unbiased as I wish I could be.

These pants serve as a sort of way for me to rant about my southern education experience. Each patch has a different experience engraved on it via laser cutter, and the time-consuming nature of hand embroidery meant that I had a lot of time to contemplate. Dress codes have always annoyed me, and I hope these pants will help strike conversations on others' school experiences.

For me, these experience include (but are not limited to):

• A biology teacher who did not believe in giraffes

• A second grade teacher who told me that evolution was a government conspiracy against the Lord

• A third grade textbook explaining how white people enslaved black people to save them from getting lost at night (since black people are dark, and therefore cannot be seen at night.)

• A biology teacher who failed my essay for mentioning global warming

• That we live in a post-racial, post sexist world

• An extremely strict dress code ( but only for girls)

• No sex ed

• Having my makeup scrubbed off in front of the class by my homeroom teacher

• D.A.R.E.

• A friend's mom refusing to carpool because my mom listened to NPR and drove a Prius