Megan Mitchell Suits up at the Anchor Desk

WLWT-TV anchor and reporter Megan Mitchell flexes her fresh tomboy style on the air.
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Occupation: Megan Mitchell, anchor and reporter, WLWT-TV; TikTok star, @megan.mitchellll
Style: Fresh, clean, tomboy

Photograph by Marlene Rounds

How has your style evolved throughout your career?

[When] I came out in college, I was going to school for broadcast journalism. One of the things my parents were concerned about was my career. Obviously, it’s in the public eye, and they were very much like, You should probably be quiet about [being gay], just so you don’t lose out on jobs. So, in the beginning it was a lot of typical dresses. . . . The thing about local news is it’s pretty rigid in terms of gender roles; you always see the female and the male sitting next to each other, and one of them is wearing a dress, and the other is wearing a suit, and you don’t see that mixed up a lot. I started wearing suits about a year ago, and it’s funny because sometimes I’ll get mean comments about it, but once I posted it to TikTok, it’s all been really great feedback.

What inspired you to make TikToks about being a queer newscaster?

Photograph by Marlene Rounds

When I was growing up, there were queer role models, but they all lived in L.A. or New York . . . so I thought, Maybe it would be fun to showcase that there’s someone in your own city, where we don’t necessarily have the resources or the role models of LGBTQ representation that the coasts have.

What kind of feedback have you received?

It’s been really nice to see that so many people either relate to it or have said, Hey, you’ve given me the courage to wear a pantsuit to the dance, or a lot of people say, You’ve give me the courage to get an undercut. It’s been really mind-blowing quite honestly.

Tell me about your undercut.

When I got to Cincinnati, I was like, What’s a way I can really bend the rules? And I [decided] to get an undercut, because you can see my anchor bob on the desk, but when I’m not there, I gotta be myself. And now it’s kind of morphed into one.

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