We live in a media-centric world. We have whole databases of film and TV at our fingertips, and we binge them with pleasure. Kylie Jenner posting 7 second videos of her makeup routine gets its own articles online. We are constantly presented with images of what we "should" be. From magazines to our friend's Instagram page, we are constantly confronted with the visual standard we are expected to upkeep, leaf alone the social and emotional standard. I mean, if you don't retweet that deep Jaden Smith tweet, are you really an intellectual?

There's so many ways that exposure to media shapes us as individuals and as a society, but today we will be focusing on the physical expectations it places on us. We are constantly bombarded with a certain standard of beauty. You have to have curves, but not too many, perfect eyebrows, but you can't look like you're wearing makeup, and a million other tiny standards that contradict each other.

There is an expanding idea of beauty, with accounts on twitter like @PoCBeauty trying to confront the traditional standards. Still, mainstream media has offered little room for people of color and certain physical physiques. Priyanka Chopra has recently graced the cover of InStyle, but one person cannot be expected to bare representation for a country with a population of 1.252 billion (and rising). That's not to say representation within India isn't abundant, Bollywood is a booming industry, but that representation needs to get more widespread before any real progress can be made.

And progress is needed in other areas as well. In the fashion industry, size 2 is average, average is 'plus size', and anything else is burred at the back of the store behind the sale section. As if it is something to be ashamed of. But there should be no shame in what size jeans you wear, that number does not define you. And the fact that the media around us has made it appear as if that should is toxic and non-inclusive of millions of people. Just like the media is completely and dismissively not inclusive to people that are not able-bodied. This year with Broadway's “Def-West Spring Awakening” revival and the recent TV-hit “Glee” brought some of the only wheelchair bound people to mass media in recent years.

Representation matters. Be it physical, religious, sexuality, or any number of things, seeing someone like yourself portrayed in media is a beautiful thing. Because otherwise we are left grasping at straws. And not the best straws at that. Take ABC's (or, I guess, Freeform's) “Pretty Little Liars.” All the cast is...well pretty. But what happens when that beauty begins to mess with how we interpret actions of the charters? For instance, there is a plot line where Aria (a 16 year old student) and Ezra Fitz (her 22 year old teacher) engage in a relationship. Now, if the actors had been cast according to age, this, visually alone, would have raised some eyebrows. But it didn't. It looked ok because at the time of filming Lucy Hale, who plays Aria, was 22 and Ian Harding, who plays Ezra, was 23. One year age difference does not look the same as six. Now, the characters are fictional, and 16 is the age of consent in Pennsylvania, where the show takes place, so there is nothing wrong with this. Still, to present this images to young girls, girls often under the age of consent, is the problem. They begin to grow used to the images. To see them as OK.

And this is where the whole problem with physical expectations lies. If the media keeps peddling us a very narrow standard of beauty, we will, sadly, grow accustomed to it. And we will stop trying to fight to change it. So, do not let this happen. Make your voices heard. Tweet the writers of The 100, who regularly kill off people of color, boycott movies like “Ghost in the Shell” that whitewash its cast, and stop watching shows like “The Biggest Looser” that use public shame to 'encourage' a certain standard of beauty. Put your money into movies and TV shows and products that encourage diversity. Products that make you feel beautiful. That show that, no matter who you are or what the media says, you are beautiful.