Once a year at Mississippi University for Women, students gather and paint a pair of blue jeans.
Each pair tells the story of someone who has been a victim of domestic or sexual violence.
The event is Jeans 4 Justice. It’s put on by universities across the country. Individuals paint their stories or the story of someone they know about being a victim of domestic or sexualized violence and the jeans are hung on a clothesline as a visual representation of domestic violence. The Counseling Center at MUW holds its campus-wide Jeans 4 Justice from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday across from Hogarth cafeteria.
MUW has held Jeans 4 Justice for several years, according to MUW counselor Rachel Clair Franklin, who set up the event along with counselor Craig Watson. Each year the event grows. Last year, students painted around 60 pairs of jeans.
“We’ve gotten some really positive responses, but last year especially,” Watson said. “We had a lot of people come out last year. We ran out of jeans actually.”
Therapeutic advocacy
The jeans serve the dual purpose of advocating for victims of sexualized violence and as a therapeutic activity for survivors, according to Watson and Franklin. The event is a signal not only of how widespread domestic violence is, but that MUW as a community does not condone it.
It’s an important way not just for the Counseling Center to advocate on behalf of victims and survivors, but to remind current victims where they can seek help. Often people who have undergone sexual violence or who are in abusive relationships feel isolated, Watson said. When 60 pairs of jeans each tell a different story of someone else who has gone through the same thing, it reminds people they are not alone.
Watson and Franklin want both students on campus and people in the Columbus community to know they can get help. Students on campus can go to the Counseling Center. Individuals in town can seek safety at Safe Haven, Columbus’s domestic violence shelter. Anyone with a friend or family member going through domestic violence should encourage that friend to get help from those places, Watson said.
It’s a kind of cathartic experience for survivors of domestic violence to paint a pair of jeans, Watson and Franklin said. Plus, as Watson pointed out, you never know who will walk by, see the event and decide to get help for themselves or someone else.
“I think people find it therapeutic to sit down and tell their story and know that their story could help somebody else potentially,” Watson said.
‘Take back control’
The Counseling Center accepts donations of blue jeans in the run-up to the event, as well as throughout the year. Some students who participate in the event choose to keep the jeans they paint. The rest the Counseling Center keeps to hang up in future years.
In the past, students and others at the event have hung around long after their jeans have been painted and hung up. They stay and talk with others who have come by to see what the event is all about or to share their own stories.
Painting is a different kind of therapeutic experience than talking to a counselor, according to Franklin.
“It’s a different kind of medium of healing that isn’t always available or that people don’t even realize …can be healing and helpful,” she said.
“It lets the individual take their power back,” Watson added.
Each story painted on the jeans is unique, Watson said, but they all share the common bond of being someone’s story. It’s empowering for a lot of people, Watson said. It’s even empowering for him to see it.
“It’s what we shoot for as counselors, to have people take back control of their lives,” he said.
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