I spent most of second block today mindlessly completing tedious fill-in-the-blank notes and relying on my coffee to keep me alive. We were going over healthy eating habits and malnutrition which segwayed into a PowerPoint about American models who, according to my teacher, are thinner than 98 percent of American women. (Where this statistic was derived, I’m honestly not sure.) On the slide were photos of two bikini models. On the left was a woman closely resembling a traditional runway model: long legs, thin arms and a flat stomach. On the right, a curvy woman looking more like a Kardashian than a stereotypical model.

In the reflection questions section of our notes, we were asked, “Is a very skinny model prettier than a curvy model? Why?” After a few minutes, we raised our hands to share our responses. The teacher asked, “OK, who thinks the model on the left is prettier?” No hands went up. “Who thinks the model on the right is prettier?” Several hands shot up immediately and others sheepishly followed, one by one.

The underclassmen at my table looked at me and sneered at my lack of a response, but I refused to put my hand up for either. They were both pretty enough to become models, for God’s sake, so they were both pretty in their own right.

I was appalled by the judgmental nature of the question. The teacher inadvertently gave the impression that skinny indefinitely equals unhealthy and ugly, while curvy indefinitely equals real and beautiful. Since when does someone’s size gauge how pretty they are? It is 2015. I understand (but do not condone) the fact that there’s this whole unreasonable socially accepted movement where society has gone from putting the petite Paris Hiltons of the world on a pedestal to worshipping the full-figured Beyonces and making everyone else feel inadequate.

Additionally, I totally get the gist of the lesson — to teach us that we should aspire to be healthy and not just skinny. However, it really gave off the idea that being thicker is “real,” better and unquestionably healthier than being skinny.

Wrong. Wrong times a million. Skinny does not necessarily mean “anorexia-stricken bulimic.” Although I could not be happier that fat shaming appears to have become a thing of the past, skinny shaming is just as damaging. Sometimes, someone who’s really skinny just has a speedy metabolism. On the other hand, curvy doesn’t always have to mean healthy. Sometimes an hour glass figure comes from a healthy diet and exercise, which is awesome. Sometimes it comes from genetics, which is also awesome. Moral of the story: you can’t always make accurate judgements about someone’s health just by looking at them. I mean, unless you’re a doctor, in which case you might be good at doing that. It’s still rude though.

Being pretty does not mean being stick thin, it does not mean having the physique of a Kardashian, it doesn’t mean being morbidly obese, it doesn’t mean having a marathon runner’s body and washboard abs and a two-minute mile time. Pretty is not a singular body type because pretty embodies any of those and anything in between. Whether or not your body type is widely represented in the media or not, it is pretty.