The Perfectly UnPerfected Program Gets Girls Feeling Good About Themselves!

I think we can all agree that at some point, we have all wished to be a little skinnier.
 
But have you ever thought about the implications of that statement—that we ALL have wished to be skinnier?
 
The founders of the Perfectly UnPerfected program, or PUP, decided that the above statement was unacceptable. PUP is a nonprofit initiative trying to get girls to think differently about their bodies through multimedia presentations around the country. It was founded by Katie Halchishick and Dr. Hugo Schwyzer.  They have speakers, music and more!  PUP is an arm of Healthy Is the New Skinny (HNS), a campaign that encourages girls to make their dreams come true while maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Would you call this woman fat?

Healthy is the New Skinny was founded by Katie Halchishick and Bradford Willcox.  The two also founded Natural Model Management, an agency for models sizes 4-12, who have been told they were too fat to model and are considered plus-size in the modeling industry.
 
When the founders surveyed girls around the country, their discoveries were shocking.  Girls said they would gladly starve themselves or work out excessively if they knew it would make them look like models.  One girl said she considered herself fat, then admitted that she was a size 5.  She wanted to be a size 2.
 
So Halchishick, Willcox and Schwyzer decided to take a multiplatform approach to solving the body image problem: The Internet (HNS), the fashion industry (Natural Model Management) and face-to-face presentations (PUP).
 
What I love about this program is the realistic outlook its founders have taken.  Halchishick, Willcox and Schwyzer know that no girl is going to wake up one morning and say, “Wow!  I’m beautiful!  Thank goodness I realized!”  That’s why they’re promoting a healthy lifestyle, not a just-drop-everything-and-love-yourself lifestyle. 
 
The founders also know that girls look to television, advertisements and the pages of fashion magazines to figure out what beautiful looks like, so they’re joining the industry itself to try and make a difference instead of trying to get girls to stop what they’ve been doing for decades.
 
“We are bringing a more fit and joyful look to fashion and working with models who want to be role models,” said HNS team member Angela Jones, who shares stories of her personal struggle with bulimia in PUP presentations.  “The #1 wish for girls is to be thinner, we are showing them they deserve to wish for so much more.”
 
Check out this video that explains the mission and outlook of the HNS and PUP teams.

Interested in hosting a PUP presentation at your school?  Click here to get in touch.