Maybe being a so-called dumpy, plump, or otherwise heavier woman isn’t the hellish nightmare that pop culture claims it is.

After all, beauty standards are arbitrary. They have fluctuated since time began. The chubby, pale-skinned beauties of ancient Greece no doubt turned soldiers’ heads during the Peloponnesian War, for example.

In other words, that “eye of the beholder” idea is true.

Looking at today’s pop culture, though, one wouldn’t see beauty’s broad possibilities. Madison Avenue’s standards, viciously shoved at women daily, are narrow, PhotoShopped, and underfed. When former Victoria’s Secret angel Erin Heatherton is told by the lingerie giant to lose weight before a show, as she recently said she was, the world has officially gone insane. The self-talk takeaway for the average woman? “If there’s something wrong with a ‘perfect’ model, what on earth is wrong with me?”

We have been manipulated to think being slender is good and any other body type (namely, normal, in all of its shapes and sizes) is bad or unfortunate. Apparently, there’s a lot of “bad” out there, since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists the average American woman as just over 5’3″ tall and 166.2 pounds, with a waist circumference of 37.5 inches — roughly a size 14 to 16. The average female model is 5’10”, 107 pounds, with a 24-inch waist. Models often wear size 00, and “plus-size” in the fashion industry is considered size 6.

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You can see the problem. But can our culture be deprogrammed to believe that thigh gaps and toned abs aren’t what gives a woman worth?

Maybe. Hope flickers.

Last month, Jennifer Lawrence told Harper’s Bazaar, “I would like us to make a new normal-body type.” She knows that, despite Hollywood’s claim that her body is realistic, it really isn’t. She added, “Everybody says, ‘We love that there is somebody with a normal body!’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t feel like I have a normal body.’ I do Pilates every day. I eat, but I work out a lot more than a normal person. I think we’ve gotten so used to underweight that when you are a normal weight it’s like, ‘Oh, my God, she’s curvy.’ Which is crazy. The bare minimum, just for me, would be to up the ante.”

But then she added — and this is the catch — “At least so I don’t feel like the fattest one.”

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The implication? Though Lawrence might be helping our culture lean toward a healthier body image, she’s still unwilling to be the “fattest one” in a group.

Such indecisive thinking is common, and Lawrence’s friend Amy Schumer shares it. When Glamour magazine featured Schumer’s size-8 frame in its plus-size edition, along with Adele, Melissa McCarthy, and model Ashley Graham (who rocked a size-16 bikini on the cover of Sports Illustrated), Schumer balked. Rather than embracing the fact she was included among beautiful and inspirational women, she fought the plus-size label.

She wrote on Instagram, “I think there’s nothing wrong with being plus size. Beautiful healthy women. Plus size is considered size 16 in America. I go between a size 6 and an 8.” She then explained that the magazine had “put me in their plus size only issue without asking or letting me know and it doesn’t feel right to me,” adding, “Young girls seeing my body type thinking that is plus size. What are your thoughts? Mine are not cool glamour not glamourous [sic].”

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Her apparently unconscious insinuation? That young girls would not want the plus-size label — even though she simultaneously says there’s nothing wrong with it and claims the other women are beautiful and healthy. In fact, the mere idea of Glamour calling Amy Schumer “plus-size” when she is a size 8 proves that the stigmatizing label is ludicrous and arbitrary.

So what’s so “wrong” with being “plus-size”? Though morbid obesity brings with it a host of dangerous health problems, being “plus-size” may have nothing to do with a woman’s health or even weight. It is often merely a body type. Besides, multiple studies have shown that adults who do happen to carry a few extra pounds have longer lifespans, according to a 2013 review in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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And many women who are considered “stocky” are still healthy and very athletic. Add to this the fact our bodies have a natural “fighting weight,” so to speak — as evidenced by a recent article in The New York Times highlighting the travails of “The Biggest Loser” contestants after the competition. Many have gained the weight back and more despite efforts to fight their resting metabolic rate and keep it off.

It’s a given that we would all be healthier if society valued a woman’s character more than her looks. But how do we get to that place? British model Iskra Lawrence has one answer, though she resorted to an obscene gesture and foul language: self-confidence regardless of body shape.

Last month she posted an Instagram picture of herself eating potato chips, silencing a hateful blogger who called her a “fat cow.” Iskra wrote, “This is for anyone who has ever been called FAT … I do not condone binge eating. I eat whatever I want in moderation. I will eat crisps but I’ll also make healthy home cooked meals and workout regularly. The message is who gives a [expletive] what anyone else thinks of you. YOU are the only one who decides your self-worth.”