Maddow is appearing in a new documentary about women in media, “Miss Representation.” (The documentary airs on Thursday night on OWN.) She told Ellen DeGeneres that she has seen an increase in “hypersexual and sometimes hyperviolent” representation of women in the past decade, and said that such depictions were giving girls “tunnel vision” about the proper way to lead their lives.

“A constant 14 percent of the feedback I get is hate mail,” she said. “…But a 100 percent of that 14 percent hate mail is about what what I look like.” She gave examples of the level of wit she was talking about: “‘I hate you not because of what you said, or some argument or some position that you have, but I hate you because you’re Rachel MadCOW, you look like a cow!’ Or, ‘You’re Rachel but I’m going to call you him.” She joked that all she wanted was some mail that was “about something other than me being mannish and cow-like.”