Post 100 Operation Beautiful Notes

5. Macy’s dressing room.
6. Chinese buffet bathroom mirror.

Slowly…

I just need to remember to do it, and to bring sticky notes with me everywhere!

Whenever I’m planning on going on I think, “OH! I need to bring my sticky notes to work on Operation Beautiful!” But then I forget to bring them. Or if I do bring them I don’t take opportunities to post them.

I need to take some effort and stick these things up!

1. Bathroom stalls
2. Bathroom mirrors
3. Books
4. Make-up displays
5. Dressing rooms
6. The gym; scales
7. Desks at school
8. Lockers

I can think of 4 notes I’ve left so far…

My first note, when I first heard of Operation Beautiful, was on the mirror of the girls’ bathroom in my favorite Chinese food restaurant.

2 in the girls’ bathroom at school.
1 in a desk in my math classroom.

It was around eight one Monday morning, the date I forget – October? – and I was one of the first people in my community college. I put all my crap in my math class room and was sitting there, alone, when I thought of Operation Beautiful. I grabbed my little pad of hot pink post-its and walked down the hall to the girls’ bathroom. I hid in a stall as I scribbled a message on one of them (I forget exactly what I wrote). My math teacher walked in and I could see her brushing her hair with her fingers, something I would’ve never expected from her—to be image conscious.

Anyways, I was nervous. I didn’t want anyone to walk in and see me. I stuck the note in the lower left-hand side of one of the mirrors and got outta there.

A few weeks later I started seeing all these fliers for a self-esteem talk that said, “You are beautiful!” on them. I thought, “Oh, that’s so cool!” And was determined to remember the date. When I found out it was Operation Beautiful I was even more excited.

Then, when I went to the event, our director said that someone had left an Operation Beautiful note in the girls’ bathroom they’d looked up the website and thought it would be great to get a speaker in… So they had the founder and editor, Caitlin Boyle, come in and do a lecture.

Sitting there at that desk I figured that that must’ve been my note. Which meant someone had seen it. Which lead to having Caitlin come in… which lead to a lot of people all hearing about it. That made me feel… I was floating. Happy isn’t even the right word. It’s really amazing to think that you could start something like that from one note. And now I think about how self-conscious I was posting that, and I know it was such an amazing decision and no one should ever be afraid of being caught doing something like that.

Though it makes me happy that they don’t know it was me. :) It’s a great secret.