Tuesday Notes – December 22, 2009

Beth Ann taught a lesson about eating disorders early this month to a group of young people at a week-long retreat. Here’s her story and how she used Operation Beautiful to help the girls understand there’s an alternative way of living besides constantly pursuing the Thin Ideal – the HEALTHY Ideal! The Healthy Ideal comes in all different shapes and sizes and is unique to everyone.

Beth Ann wrote, “We started off teaching the kids about nutrition and portion sizes and then moved to eating disorders. We showed them articles and pictures from magazines…one specifically from a summer issue of Self Magazine that was titled "How to be Naturally Beautiful". The students talked about the pressures of the media and what might influence someone to develop an eating disorder. We also talked to them about the male perspective…which I think we sometimes forget about. Men pictures commercials and movies are always super chiseled and buff which is not what most men in "real life" look like. We read some of the Operation Beautiful stories out loud with the students and they were very moved by it.

They had to pick a partner and took a post it and wrote a note to their partner. Everyone stuck the post its on their backs and then they had to walk around and read them out loud to each other. At first, they were all really shy but once they started writing and walking around…something beautiful happened. Students that were afraid to participate in the activity we did earlier were asking for extra post its. They were talking and communicating with each other, which in this case is a huge deal. These are students coming from lower socioeconomic regions and probably do not get the same attention from family members or friends as they should. There was one student from another workshop who fell asleep because it was the first time they were in a heated building all week. It was the first time they could be comfortable..over the course of an. entire. week.

What Operation Beautiful is amazing… I can’t say it enough. I wish everyone could have seen the looks on the faces of these kids.”