Meteorologist Laura Mock was recently at the center of controversy because of her hair. She has spoken out about the criticism she received for her appearance in a TV broadcast, explaining the tough time she’s been facing and defending other women against hateful comments.

After facing backlash for how her hair looked while she was broadcasting, Fox 23 Meteorologist Laura Mock, 33, is clapping back at critics. Taking to Facebook to post a message responding to the criticism, Mock shared a heartbreaking revelation that provides context to the situation.

Having worked as a meteorologist for a decade, Mock is used to receiving viewer comments about her broadcasts and has garnered opinions on her appearance before. However, an email hailing from an observer was an opinion that Mock and her team found hard to ignore.

Commenting on the fact that Mock was wearing a wig, the sender wrote, “Can she stop playing with her hair and do the weather. Looks like she has added fake hair.” What the person may not have been aware of is the fact that Mock wore a wig because she has cancer.

She chose to take the high road in her response and shine a light on her health issues. “News flash! It is fake,” she penned alongside a screenshot of the email. She then went on to reveal, “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.”

The 33-year-old urged the public to practice caution and think twice before sending hurtful comments. Mock also clarified that while comments like that don’t bother her because she is a strong person who has more urgent matters to worry about, like beating cancer, she shouldn’t have to tolerate rude remarks.

In her response to the email, which was sent to her entire newsroom, she shared two pictures of herself. One showed her wearing the wig while broadcasting and the other displayed her smiling for the camera with a scarf on her head and her wig in her hand.

Mock also turned her message into a learning opportunity and used it to spotlight other women who, like her, get hateful comments about their appearances.

“I’m battling cancer, and everybody (at work) feels bad for me getting that comment. But there are women 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,” she expressed.

Two weeks before she began wearing a wig, Mock publicized the details of her stage 3 triple-negative breast cancer diagnosis on air. She was diagnosed in May (2024), after discovering a lump in her breast in February.

She spoke about how she was informed that the cancer was growing rapidly and that chemotherapy is the most effective step with the kind of cancer she has. Her hair began falling out in June and by that time, Mock had already conducted 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. It felt so freeing,” Mock divulged. Her husband had also helped shave the rest of her hair off after she had gotten through the first half.

Explaining why she decided to wear a wig apart from the fact that her hair started falling out, Mock mentioned, “And it’s not perfect — it’s obviously a wig — but it just makes me look normal to people.”

Aside from the criticism she received from the unknown email sender, Mock has been uplifted by other people who have wished her well and assured her of how good she looks. “I have been overwhelmed with positive comments,” Mock shared.

However, she did admit, “There have not been many negative ones, but when the negative ones come in, they absolutely stand out.” As for how she and her team dealt with the negative email, a media outlet reports that a co-worker responded explaining that Mock is undergoing treatment for cancer, to which they never replied.

Closing out her statement, Mock reiterated the importance of the public taking into consideration the fact that people on TV are still human just like they are.

“We are people, too. We are going through our own struggles day to day. 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,” Mock highlighted.

Her recent revelations about her cancer diagnosis are not the first time Mock has spotlighted the status of her health. On June 26, she took to Instagram to share photos of her mammogram appointment on April 29, after she had found the lump in her breast.

“At first, the doctors and I thought it was a cyst since I’m ‘young.’ Three biopsies and several scans later we determined I have breast cancer that […] has spread to a few lymph nodes. I have a great team of doctors and my cancer fight is underway,” Mock asserted in her caption.

She also shared how, at the time, she had already received a couple of weeks of chemotherapy and still had months of treatment to go. Mock also painted a realistic picture of the difficult nature of her journey ahead, embracing the fact that there will be good and bad days.

She explained that she is choosing to share her story in the hopes of letting others who may be going through the same fight know that they are not alone. Mock also urged women to listen to their bodies, writing, “My gut told me not to ignore this hint of something wrong in my body, I urge you to listen to yours.”