High school bathrooms can be an escape for students.       When students don’t want anyone to see them crying. When they don’t feel like going to class. When they need to get away from it all and take a quick five-minute break from class. When they stop in during passing time to check yourself out in the mirror. For girls especially, that minute of looking in the mirror can send the negative thoughts racing and having them doubting their image for the rest of the day.
Except one day at ALHS someone made an effort to help stop those negative thoughts. Sticky notes with phrases lined the mirrors:
“You are beautiful.”
“Smile—happy looks good on you.”
“You’re beautiful; It’s society that’s ugly.”
When a girl looked into the mirror she’d look up and read the note and be focused on what the note said instead of whatever she saw wrong in her reflection.
“Operation Beautiful” is responsible for those posted. O.B. is an online-based project and website promoting healthy body image mainly for young girls. The site was started in June 2009 by Caitlyn Boyle after she had a rough day at work.
“I was having a really bad day and went into a public bathroom, pulled out a piece of paper while I was having all these negative thoughts about myself, I wrote ‘You are beautiful’ on it and stuck it to the mirror and left it for somebody else to find,” Boyle said.
Boyle then blogged about her experience and asked all her readers to participate by posting their own self-encouraging notes. Since then the website has received 10,000 pictures of notes from all around the world.
The stories of people being affected by the notes are inspirational. To read about them there have been books published about Operation Beautiful. “Operation Beautiful: Transforming the Way you see Yourself one Post-It Note at a Time” came out in August 2010 and “Operation Beautiful: For Best Friends” in December 2012. The O.B. Facebook page has thousands of stories posted every day by people helped by the project.
“Wow, your hair is not that frizzy today,” said sophomore Julia Otten to her reflection after she read a note on the mirror that said “Give yourself a compliment. You are beautiful.”
The girls at Albert Lea High School saw the restrooms here a different way the day there were encouraging notes posted all over the mirrors. Instead of looking for something to fix in their reflection, their eyes were drawn to a pink note instead.
Every girl reacts differently to what they read on the note. They could ignore it, take it with them so the reminder stays in their pocket all day, or scoff at the thought that someone put it there. Or hopefully it made them think positive thoughts about themselves and pass on the message.
“It made me smile,” said sophomore Erin Murtaugh after she saw a note on the display case [that everyone checks themselves out in as the walk by.]
“I really liked it,” said freshman Olivia Sanchez. Sanchez was touched by the thought that someone put the notes up.
“[Students] feel alone, then they find this note and they realize that there are other people at their school that actually care,” Boyle said. “It has such an impact.”
Body image issues some people have during this time are some of the hardest obstacles students have to overcome. The point of Operation Beautiful and the notes posted is to give people courage and for them to love themselves the way that they are.