Meteorologist Laura Mock has received comments about her appearance before, but one that was recently sent to her entire team at work struck a nerve.
Mock, 33, who works at Fox 23 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, typically brushes off such comments. But this one was jab at the wig she recently started wearing because she's undergoing chemotherapy.
The subject line read, “Laura Mock,” and in the body of the email, the sender wrote: “Can she stop playing with her hair and do weather. Looks like she has added fake hair.”
Mock posted a screenshot of the message on Facebook along with a response. “News flash! It is fake,” Mock wrote. “I started losing my hair (thanks chemotherapy!) at the end of June and have been wearing a wig for a little more than a week.”
“Think twice before sending hateful emails to your local news talent. This one was to our entire newsroom. Does it bother me? Not really. I have thick skin and have other things to worry about, like the cancer I’m trying to kick out of my body. Doesn’t mean I should have to tolerate comments like this.”
She included two photos, one of her wearing her new wig and another of her holding it.
Mock has been in her field for a decade, so she's used to viewer feedback. Many of the opinions sent in are positive, some negative — and they rarely make note of the quality of her work.
So, rather than allow the comment to get her down, Mock decided it should be a learning opportunity.
“I’m battling cancer, and everybody (at work) feels bad for me getting that comment,” Mock tells TODAY.com. “But there are women that are getting these comments every day that maybe aren’t battling cancer, but they’re battling other things in their lives, and we don’t deserve to have this done.”
Mock chose to share the details of her diagnosis on air two weeks before she started wearing a wig. She was diagnosed with stage 3 triple-negative breast cancer in May 2024, after finding a lump in her breast in February.
“I was told it was growing quickly and that with this type (of cancer) chemotherapy is the first step and most effective step,” Mock says. Since then, she’d been mentally preparing to lose her hair. When it began falling out in June, Mock had already done research on wigs.
“As soon as it started falling out, I held on as long as I could, and then realized, 'You know what? It’s not worth it,' and buzzed my head,” Mock recalls. “It felt so freeing.”
After she shaved the first section, her husband helped remove the rest. “That next Monday, I showed up to work with a wig on. And it’s not perfect — it’s obviously a wig — but it just makes me look normal to people," she explains.
Most of the comments she’s received from viewers have been supportive. They've written in to tell her how great she looks and wish her well. “I have been overwhelmed with positive comments,” Mock says. “There have not been many negative ones, but when the negative ones come in, they absolutely stand out.”
A co-worker who came across the email before Mock responded and told the commenter that Mock was undergoing treatment for cancer. They never responded.
Now, Mock is encouraging viewers to carefully consider the people on the receiving end of their comments before sending them in. “The people that you see on your local TV are just that: We are people, too. We are going through our own struggles day to day,” she says.
“If our makeup and hair isn’t perfectly in place, give us grace. You don’t know what our morning was like, what our week was like."
Instead, “focus on the job we’re doing," Mock says.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
