In Miss Representation, actress-activist Rosario Dawson talks about how important it is for women to write their own stories. This is equally important in

entertainment and in journalism alike. Yet as I discuss in the film, today’s media climate is extremely toxic for women and girls, and for people of color.

That’s because the main purpose of TV programming today is not to entertain, engage or inform us. Sad but true: the purpose is generate sky-high profits for the tiny handful of mega-merged media corporations that own and control the vast majority of what we’re given to watch, see, hear and play in newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, movies, billboards and video games. When these six major conglomerates (Disney, Time Warner, NewsCorp, Viacom, CBS and General Electric) prioritize the financial bottom line over journalistic ethics, diverse and critical art, and the public interest, we all lose out… but women pay a particularly steep price.

Journalism is the only industry in America that has Constitutional protection, because a healthy democracy cannot function without a free, independent, critical press. Yet for decades, groups like Women In Media & News, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, the White House Project and the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film have documented that women are misrepresented and marginalized as op-ed writers, front-page news sources, lead anchors, and commentators… that is, when they aren’t missing entirely.

Christina Hendricks’ bold, retro-bedecked curves

as Joan on AMC’s Mad Men have elicited as many positive headlines as the series itself — was named