Texas mother creates ‘bulletproof’ back-to-school dress to send message about gun violence: ‘We need to protect our babies’ – By David Artavia (Yahoo) / Aug 15, 2022
Sending children back to school in the fall can be an emotional rollercoaster for most parents — especially after a string of school shootings in the last year that has made the yearly tradition feel downright overwhelming.
“My daughter was in kindergarten last year and she knew that her place in ‘lockdown drills’ was by the toilet in the classroom bathroom, and that she had to wait till the administrators banged on the doors, and that she had to be quiet,” Cassie Arnold, an arts educator and mom of three living in Texas, tells Yahoo Life, lamenting the fact that school shootings have become normalized. “She wasn’t fazed by it. She was just like, well, this is what we do.”
Arnold — in order to jumpstart important conversations about school gun violence, and to coincide with the return to school — decided to use her skills as an artist to create School Uniform (Bulletproof Dress), an outfit worn by her middle child in a photo for social media.
Made entirely of Kevlar — the same heat-resistant synthetic material found in most bulletproof vests — Arnold spent weeks sewing the dress (which is not actually fully bulletproof, but created instead to be a statement).
