Operation Beautiful Book Tour: Day 7 – Superchick

When I was 15 I started a continual battle with an eating disorder because a boy said something to me that made me think I was chubby. I hear little girls as young as 8 years old saying they think they are fat. We as females are constantly being told through TV, magazines, advertising and our own peers what is supposedly beautiful and what size we should be. When are we going to stop listening to the world around us and take hold of the women we were created to be? When are we going to see our beauty through the eyes of our Creator? When is our self-esteem going to stop being dependent on other people’s opinions?

I think we – and by we I mean me and you who are reading this right now -need to grab hold of our beauty and stand tall, strong and proud so that future generations see what real beauty looks like.

Join me.  Say it with me:

“I am beautiful just the way I am.”

Now share your knowledge.

- Melissa Brock <3

Some facts about Operation Beautiful:

• Operation Beautiful is a viral community effort to increase self-confidence and stop negative self-talk.  Operation Beautiful has nothing to do with how much you weigh; it’s about who you are intrinsically as a person – and that is BEAUTIFUL! The website is www.OperationBeautiful.com.
• Operation Beautiful, the book is now in stores at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Indie Bound.
• The site was started in June 2008 and they’ve received 5,000 plus notes from every populated continent.
• EVERY note that gets emailed to the site goes up on the Internet for others to see!

Share with us, a story of how YOU and YOUR IMAGE have been POSITIVELY effected by the act of someone else in the comment section for your chance to win a copy of “Operation Beautiful” the book!

Also, if you are at a festival this summer remember to look for the Superchick post-it notes out there! You should see a ton of pink ones floating around, with the exception of ONE yellow post-it per festival, aka the ‘Golden Ticket’! If you find the winning Operation Beautiful post-it, please email us to redeem your Superchick Merch Prize pack and the chance to win a Superchick guitar!

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Festival season is midway through and we have enjoyed getting out and seeing all of you.  We are continuing our Operation Beautiful campaign at all the festivals – with a special incentive!  All the post-its out there are pink with the exception one yellow post-it/golden ticket per festival!  If you find the winning Operation Beautiful post-it, please email us to redeem your Superchick Merch Prize pack and the chance to win a Superchick guitar!

Also please keep up the good work on your own Operation Beautiful Campaigns.  And stop by later this week as we host the Operation Beautiful virtual book tour in support of the book which releases today!  More information can be found at OperationBeautiful.com

An Operation Beautiful note I posted in a Chili’s bathroom in Goshen, IN

I wanted to let you guys and girls know about a new project I am starting. Basically, I am writing a book about “Courage,” my song on our Beauty From Pain record about my eating disorder (read my story here), and what I want to include in my book are some of those amazing stories many of you have shared with me over the years about how the song has helped you. I believe that when we go through something like this in our lives we need to share it with others and let them know they are not alone.

So if you have something you would like to share and have considered for inclusion in my book, please send your story to me at courage@superchickonline.com. You can choose to remain anonymous, or just use first names.

I think we can all help even more people who have these same struggles with weight, identity, appearance or self-esteem by letting our stories be heard. Let’s unite and make a positive change in the world!

Much love
Melissa
courage@superchickonline.com

Tonight we played a high school in McAlisterville, PA. It was a perfect fall weather day out, and we woke up literally parked next to a soccer field and a nice track… I could sense Sophie’s excitement when we had our potty walk this morning, and she was antsy all morning til Momma got ready and we went exploring. (Sophie’s my dog. Not to be confused with my sister or something, and then that last statement would be really weird.)

Once in a while we hear of something that seems to really go along with our vision as a band, and recently we heard of this movement called Operation Beautiful. You can check it out more at OperationBeautiful.com. The mission of Operation Beautiful is to post anonymous notes in public places for other women to find. The point is that WE ARE ALL BEAUTIFUL. You are enough… just the way you are! It’s so simple, but if you make someone smile or think differently about themselves today, than it’s worth the little effort, right?

We loved the idea, and wrote Caitlin, who started Operation Beautiful, and told her about our band and that some of our songs are about self-esteem, eating disorders, dealing with body image stuff and that we’d love to get involved!

Tonight at our show, Melissa and I posed with the amazing crowd and told them all about Operation Beautiful and how they could bring it to their town and start making a difference one little post-it at a time. And earlier today we made some signs and posed out in the soccer field (and I think Sophie even wanted to be a part of it…)

So, if you start this and tell someone about it, it will have a ripple effect, and we’ll be making girls feel beautiful all over the world. Check out the website, come up with your own creative way to spread the love if you’re interested, and I’d love to see some of your ideas too!

If you can, send me a copy to this email: beautyfrompain08@hotmail.com… and definitely send them into Operation Beautiful and if you want, let them know you heard about them through us..=) Because we really are all beautiful, just as we are, but sometimes it’s nice to hear.

This week, to support National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, we are giving away a free download of our song “Courage.”

Click here to download the song, no strings attached.

This song is an extremely personal song for me. I want to share with you the story behind the song, which is about my own struggle with an eating disorder. I hope that it reaches someone out there who has been or is where I’ve been, that it will encourage those of you who may be struggling with a similar problem. You’re not alone… and there is hope.

Where do you start when you’re about to be vulnerable with people you have and may never meet? I guess at the beginning…

I think I was 12 when I first started feeling the affects of “pretty pressure,” as I like to call it. My best friend was 2 years older than me and she was tall and athletic and pretty and boys liked her and and and… And that was the first time I remember realizing I was short and kinda chubby and that my daddy thinking I was pretty just wasn’t enough anymore.

And that’s pretty much the story from ages 12-15. Those awkward, hard years of realizing boys exist (even though I kinda always liked boys:)) and going through lots of changes and feeling pressure from so many things: friends, magazines (Bop, Teen Beat), TV, shopping malls with ads of people that were perfect on the walls… There were so many things all around that all added up to me being short and kinda chubby.

There was a defining moment though where it went from just feeling not good enough to doing something about it:

There was a boy… and I liked this boy a lot. He was cute and tall and had curly hair and a great smile that would make me forget what I was thinking or doing if he looked my way. I wanted this boy to like me. I would think of things to say if I ever got the chance to talk to him. I planned my outfits every morning with him in mind.

One day I saw him walking towards me and I thought, “Oh this is it. Here he comes and we are gonna talk and it is gonna be magical!” He came up to me and we chit-chatted for a little bit… And then he looked at me as if he was gonna say something important, you know with the head tilted to one side, blue eyes sparkling, so tall I would have had to stand on my tip toes if he ever kissed me. I had every bit of me alert to the beautiful words I anticipated coming out of his mouth.

“Melissa,” he said.

“Yes?” I replied, with many excited head nods.

“You know, you kind of have chubby ankles,” he said, ever so casually.

And that’s the moment that all the years of feeling a little bit ugly and chubby came to their final pinnacle and then crashed down on me and buried me. That’s the moment I knew I would do anything to never feel that again. That’s the moment I decided to do whatever it takes to not be that girl anymore. That’s the moment I became an anorexic.

I didn’t completely stop eating right away because that would be too obvious. I started with little things, like excuses that I didn’t feel well, so that meal got skipped. Then there was the ‘oh I ate already’ – another meal skipped. The ‘I’m gonna eat as soon as I get home’ – meal skipped. And the ‘when I eat in the morning it makes my stomach upset’ – no meal. ‘I’m going out with friends and we are gonna eat at the mall’ – zero meal.

It became lots of little lies every day until I got so good at it that eventually I had enough lies that I could skip whole days of eating… which became weeks… and then became months. The part that really fueled the fire was that I was losing weight and people were telling me that I looked good. So I thought “why in the world stop?” I was finally getting skinny like I always wanted to be and people seemed to like it. It was a sealed deal as far as I was concerned.

After awhile I actually had said that I didn’t feel well so many times that the thought of food actually did make me feel sick. It was awesome…for awhile. Until people stopped telling me that I looked good and started looking at me funny. Until my grandpa one day said to me that it looked like someone had deflated my chest. Until I started feeling ugly again and the same feelings of just not being happy with myself slowly crept back in.

After about 3 months of pretty much not eating, I started looking for something to make me feel happy and pretty again. It just so happened that my best friend had been away at a clinic for eating disorders and when she got home she started telling me things that she learned there. The most important thing she ever told me one day still rings in my head whenever I feel not quite good enough: God created you uniquely and specifically for a reason and a purpose and He thinks you are a beautiful creation.

Now I’m not here to tell you that the moment she said those words to me I believed them and was miraculously transformed. But those words did start something inside of me. Kind of like a little (very little) seed of truth and hope were planted and the more I started to want my life to change and the more I talked to my friend about it, the more it would grow.

I honestly don’t remember exactly how long it took but I do remember the moment I believed it for the first time. I was standing in the bathroom looking in the mirror. At first I was just looking at myself, doing the usual dissecting and scrutinizing every inch and criticizing myself…. and then those words about God knitting me in my mother’s womb came to me as if someone was audibly saying it out loud to me at that moment.

I tried to ignore it, but then again I heard, “I made you exactly the way I wanted you to be – a beautiful creation. You are beautiful!”

God was telling me something in that moment that I will never forget, and when I looked up into the mirror this time it was not with my eyes – I saw myself for the first time the way God looks down on me. The same way He looked down on me the day that I was born and said, “What a beautiful creation!”

And it’s not just about a worldly beauty that changes and fades, but a Godly kind of beauty. The kind of beauty that we see when we look at the mountains and the ocean, the sky, flowers, birds, rainbows and all the other things that God created and that we stop and say, “Wow, that is so beautiful.” The God that created those things created me. I am beautiful… a beauty that cannot be taken away from me because it was created in me before I was even one day old.

I broke that day. I cried and cried and cried, but not because I felt ugly or unaccepted. I cried because for the first time, I felt truly and wholeheartedly loved with no strings attached just the way that I am.

I’m not gonna sit here and say that after that it was easy going. It did get better – way better – for a long time. And then about the third year I was in Superchick I somehow forgot about that beauty that I’d found that day so many years before. I started feeling inadequate and like I needed to be a certain shape and size for people to love me. So I stopped eating again. It wasn’t as easy this time though, because I had people in my life that knew the lies I would try to use. I did give into the anorexia again for a bit, but this time it was harder.

I believe that’s because once you know the truth, you can’t hide from it for very long. You can ignore it for awhile and keep yourself busy and try to push it away, but when everything stops – and there will always be a moment when it does and you are all alone confronted with what you are doing to yourself – the truth will start to whisper in your ear.

And for me God whispered once again, “You are my beautiful creation, Melissa.” I couldn’t ignore it. So I clung to it like water and air. I made it my mantra every morning when I would wake up. I would look in the mirror and say, “What am I gonna believe today? Lies or the truth? Am I going to be courageous? Am I going to choose real beauty or fake?”

And that’s what I have done every day since then.

It’s not always about a one time choice. Sometimes that’s too big or too hard to handle or grasp or deal with. So we make it one day at a time. And some days (I’m gonna be completely honest here), I choose the lie. But the beauty of life is that the next day, or even the next minute sometimes, I can choose the truth.

My name is Melissa. I have struggled with anorexia since I was 15 years old. Today I beat it and choose the truth. I am beautiful. I am loved. I am me.

Download “Courage” this week for free by clicking here. Please feel free to share this link with friends who may also need to hear the song this week during National Eating Disorders Awareness Week.

There are so many people out there who are struggling with self-image issues and eating disorders. Sometimes, all it can take to help someone is an unexpected compliment to remind them that they are beautiful! Join the OperationBeautiful.com movement and help change someone’s perception of themselves today… because we all need a reminder sometimes that we are each uniquely and wonderfully so beautiful!

Download “So Beautiful” on iTunes

Next week is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week and some of you who know me better know that this hits close to home for me.

I know full-well the pressures that society and even friends sometimes place on us to be thin and beautiful. It started for me when I was 15. I know what it’s like to not feel pretty, to feel fat, to feel like no one would ever want to be with you or even be friends with you because you feel so bad about yourself.

BUT I also know how it feels to be free from those pressures and feel a love and acceptance that isn’t humanly possible. Next week I am going to share my story, the whole story. And I hope that it reaches someone out there who has been or is where I have been. The biggest step is knowing you aren’t alone.

And I am telling you, yes you who is reading this right now and thinking about not eating today, YOU ARE NOT ALONE… because I understand. I am there with you and someone so much bigger is there as well.

February 21-27 is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, and Operation Beautiful is one of the featured organizations for the week.

Many of you are familiar with Superchick’s song “Courage” (from the Beauty From Pain album), which is a song about Melissa’s own struggle with an eating disorder: “I think the most powerful way to tell a story is to be completely vulnerable and honest about ourselves,” Melissa explains. “This song isn’t preaching a message. It’s a true story. I pray people will be touched by it and will be willing to see where they hide their struggles, their pain and then have courage to tell someone. They need people they can let into that secret life and love them through it. We aren’t meant to make it through life alone. None of us have it all together.”

Operation Beautiful is collecting stories about how positive self-talk and Operation Beautiful post-it notes have helped girls, women and men recover from their eating disorder. These stories will be included on OperationBeautiful.com during NEDA Week. If you have a story (one paragraph or so) to share, please email it to Operation Beautiful. Include your name (or state you want it to be anonymous), age, location and blog address.

Listen to Superchick’s song “Courage” below… and remember… you are SO BEAUTIFUL!

You’ve heard us talk about Operation Beautiful… and we hope you’ve joined the movement and have started to post some notes of your own!

We just got word that Operation Beautiful is going to be turned into a book, releasing next fall – and now is your chance to submit your notes for the chance to be included in it!

Operation Beautiful will be selecting 125 notes and/or stories to be in the book, and they are accepting submissions now! PLUS, you’ll have the chance to win some really great prizes, including some Superchick swag!

There’s not a lot of time left before the book goes to publishing, so if you have a great note – with a unique message or in a unique place – or you have a story about why YOU are truly beautiful, send it in!

Click here for more information and to enter your notes!

PS. You’re beautiful!!!

On our trip this past weekend, we left a couple of Operation Beautiful notes… The first was on the plane and the other we left on the mirror in our hotel room.

Join the movement and post some notes of your own! Every girl needs a reminder sometimes that she is SO BEAUTIFUL.