Michelle Cove is a filmmaker, journalist, and bestselling author. Her book Seeking Happily Ever After: How to Navigate the Ups and Downs of Being Single without Losing Your Mind will be published by Penguin this October. Her film, Seeking Happily Ever After, debuts this weekend at the California Independent Film Festival. Here’s Michelle! -Deborah

Seeking Happily Ever After (www.seeknghappilyeverafter.com) is a feature-length documentary about why there are more single 30-something women than ever and whether women are redefining “happily ever after.” The idea sprang from a discussion I had three years ago with a friend at a coffeehouse (where all great conversations take place). We were talking about the media’s focus on the rising number of single women, and how wrong they seemed to be getting it in their portrayal of who these women are. In movies and TV, we watched single women in their mid-twenties and older portrayed repeatedly as either totally desperate to marry or so career-driven they couldn’t be bothered to find a man. The single women of reality TV seem to get falling-down drunk like college freshman, hang in hot tubs with men they barely know, and/or sob in the fetal position like toddlers.

So it wasn’t exactly surprising when Live Science reported recently that while there are more single women than ever, the “spinster” stigma is not lifting for women. Um…duh.

Look at the models we see week to week. We’ve got Emma on “Glee,” who pined after Mr. Schuester all of season one like a 5th grade girl; we’ve got Liz Lemon on “30” rock who is so pathetic in the love department that she can’t find anyone to drive her home from the root canal she intentionally scheduled on Valentine’s Day. And let’s not forget our small-screen-turned-big-screen poster child for single women everywhere: Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City. So many of us hoped she would remain the cool, smart single woman who followed her own path. Instead, the writers married her off to Mr. Big—the man who made a hobby of letting her down and breaking her heart, even skipping out on the wedding after agreeing to wed Carrie (Sure they eventually get hitched, but it felt like a big downer to me).

I’m proud of Seeking Happily Ever After, which premieres this month at the California Independent Film Festival. Producer Kerry David and I made it our mission to reveal the various ups and downs of being a single woman today—while giving women an array of real-life inspiring stories told by singles around the U.S. Kerry is single, I’m happily married and we have no agenda to push women into any particular relationship status. We just want women to make their choices about “happily ever after” with intention and clarity. Now we just need some media support to boost single women’s confidence instead of perpetually adding to the spinster stigma.

To watch the trailer and support the doc, visit: http://kck.st/bV022F