Operation Beautiful movement spreads positive self-images

The dreaded day finally came, and a little girl felt sweat break out on her brow as her body turned ice cold.

It was the day when all the third-graders in her class would be weighed as part of their physical exams. She didn’t know what else to do but stand in line patiently and hope her teacher would listen to her.

When it was her turn, she quietly asked the teacher not to say her weight out loud. She was embarrassed — she knew she was about 20 pounds heavier than the other girls in her class and she hated it.

But though she was certain she was different from everyone else, studies show those feelings were not unique.

A study published in Teen magazine in 2003 reported that 35 percent of girls ages 6 to 12 had been on at least one diet. Fifty to 70 percent of girls with healthy weights said in the article they believed they were overweight.

And it doesn’t just happen to women. A study by the University of Colorado at Boulder Wardenburg Health Center showed that two out of five women and one out of five men would trade three to five years of their lives to achieve their weight goals.

***

Two years ago, Caitlin Boyle had a bad day at work. She decided to do something simple for someone else to feel better and unknowingly launched a national campaign to promote self-esteem.

“The biggest mistake we make is beating ourselves up for not looking like models or celebrities,” Boyle said. “It’s time we stop emulating or striving for a type of perfection that doesn’t even exist in the real world. It’s okay to look like a human.”

Boyle started the Operation Beautiful website to encourage men and women to inspire self-esteem in complete strangers and in themselves.

The movement involves posting notes in different places that are heavily trafficked. Bathroom mirrors, stall doors and trash cans have all been locations to find notes with messages such as “You’re beautiful” or “Scales measure weight, not worth.”

Boyle said she tries to get people to post encouraging notes in places where negative self-talk occurs, such as while looking in the mirror, on scales or at the gym.

“I think it makes people smile when they realize how much goodness there is in the world,” Boyle said. “The idea that someone would do this for a stranger is so uplifting.”

The explosion of the site’s popularity surprised Boyle. Since its creation, she has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Network, “The Today Show” and Chicago NBC Morning News, to name a few.

But Boyle has never lost sight of what is most important about the site — the people.

She said she’s received more than 7,000 notes from around the world since she started the movement, and she tries to reply to every e-mail she receives.

Boyle said her favorite story is that of Vit, a teenager from Canada sent to a treatment facility for severe anorexia. Doctors were concerned she would not survive.

One day, Vit slipped into a bathroom to throw up her lunch. She found an Operation Beautiful note on the stall.

“The simple message — ‘You are good enough the way you are’ — made her pause and reconsider her destructive behavior,” Boyle said.

Vit contacted Boyle months later with news that she was out of the hospital and very healthy.

“Vit knew a stranger posted the note, but she felt like the timing was a message from God,” Boyle said.

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Rachel Patrick, a sophomore at Floyd Central High School in Floyds Knobs, Ind., said she became inspired by Boyle’s work and decided to make it local.

She had no idea her idea would spread the word to thousands.

Patrick first heard about Operation Beautiful from a friend, but it took a while for the movement to have meaning for her.

“I really didn’t think anything of it at first,” Patrick said.

After suffering a tragedy in her family, Patrick began going to counseling. She went to the bathroom afterward one day and found a note posted on the mirror — “You are beautiful.”

It brightened her day and put a smile on her face. She decided to start posting the notes herself.

Patrick can’t drive yet, so she assembled a few friends to drive around with her to post the notes around town.

Suddenly 20 people wanted to go along, so she decided to put the event on Facebook to make it easier on everyone to coordinate. That’s where it exploded.

“People invited college friends, who invited friends abroad, and suddenly it was huge,” Patrick said.

The Facebook event now has attendees from many states and several countries, such as Australia and Germany, and almost 14,500 have listed themselves as “attending.” The number continues to grow rapidly.

***

Now an IU freshman, Lorissa Pietruszka, the little girl afraid her teacher would reveal her weight to her classmates, said this movement and similar work by others have helped her accept and appreciate her body.

“When I was younger, I was always the chubby kid,” Pietruszka said. “I wasn’t really pretty. I felt I wasn’t good enough.”

She said a friend told her about the movement her junior year of high school.
After seeing the success of the website, Pietruszka and her friends started posting the notes in their school and in diners around Munster, Ind.

She said when she came to IU she was hesitant to continue posting, but the day she moved into Collins Living-Learning Center, she found a note stuck to the bathroom mirror.

“To think there are other people out there like myself ... to know strangers wanted to help one another, was really powerful,” Pietruszka said.

She said she believes the media contributes heavily to negative images men and women develop of themselves.

Pietruszka used the show “America’s Next Top Model” as an example. During one season, the show featured “thick” models. The average weight of these models was 120 pounds.

According to the Wardenburg Health Center, the average U.S. woman is 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 140 pounds, whereas the average U.S. model is 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs 117 pounds.

But she said these “silly pieces of paper” continue to negate these incorrect impressions.

She said they and similar works by authors such as Eve Ensler have helped her revise her self-image.

“There’s no limitation. There’s no perfect size or shape,” Pietruszka said. “I feel as though I’m still the chubby kid, but that’s
beautiful.”