Mo Media, More Impact: The Confessions of a College Student with Alopecia Areata
“Your life is not a joke and your misfortune is not a punchline.” -Morgan Norris.
Morgan Norris speaks after receiving the Virginias Associated Press Broadcasters 2025 Annual Scholarship
“I laugh a lot,” Morgan says, cracking up. “I think that my way of coping is humor. And it’s great that’s what I do, but at the same time I often feel like I treat myself like I’m a joke.”
She may put on the biggest smile you’ve ever seen, but behind the laughter is a firecracker. A member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., a Fox 5 Atlanta intern, an Emma Bowen Rising Star, and a 2024 Rising Future Maker are only some of Morgan Norris’s impressive accolades. But it took a lot of faith—and even more trials and tribulations—to get her here.
A graduating senior at Hampton University, Morgan studies journalism and film. When we speak about her story, she doesn’t lead with the fact that she comes from a broken home. Instead, she chooses to start with her mother, a woman she describes as her greatest role model. Her mother, who built a house and owned a school, inspired Morgan to pursue a creative path.
Since she was a child, Morgan has loved the arts. She spent much of her childhood in a performing arts company, acting in different productions. Sooner rather than later, she realized her purpose was storytelling. “I believe it is my job to tell stories. Seeing others succeed makes me happy, which is why I like to tell stories,” she says.
Her decision to study journalism at Hampton didn’t come easy, though. “I was bullied a lot in high school because I was the principal's daughter,” she recalls. “[Everyone] was like, ‘Oh, she cheats, that’s the reason she has all A's.’” After that experience, the thought of going to her mother’s alma mater made her hesitant. She feared she would be living someone else’s legacy, not her own. But every time Morgan visited, she felt called to her home by the sea.
Now with her vision unfolding, Morgan’s foot is on the gas. Still, to fully execute her goals as a journalist, she says she needs to define herself. She wants her evolving brand, Mo Media (@mo.media._), to impact more communities—especially the Black community—by telling real stories.
In December 2024, she released her first documentary, Norfolk Underwater: Lost Time, a project she directed, filmed, and edited entirely on her own. The film investigates how environmental injustice impacts Norfolk’s Southside, a predominantly Black community in need of critical flood protection. Through projects like this, Morgan aspires to grow Mo Media into a successful company.
Despite everything she’s achieved, success hasn’t shielded her from hardship. In fall 2023, a stressful semester triggered unexpected hair loss.
Devastated, she began trying different hairstyles to mask the loss. She experimented with natural twists and fluffy fros to hide it, but nothing worked. “My hair got shorter and shorter and shorter and started coming out more,” she says.
This wasn't her first encounter with the condition.
Back in 2018, on a school field trip, Morgan remembers classmates laughing at a bald spot on her head. After that, her mom began noticing quarter-sized bald spots—something Morgan initially brushed off. “I couldn't see it, number one, and I didn't do my own hair. And all of it grew back right before I went to Hampton.”
But when the hair loss returned, that’s when Morgan got concerned.
According to the National Alopecia Areata Foundation, Alopecia Areata is an autoimmune disease that causes sudden hair loss on the scalp, face, and sometimes other areas of the body. Morgan has Alopecia Totalis, a more severe type of alopecia that causes total hair loss on the scalp.
For a while, Morgan’s friends didn’t notice a difference in her hair. “I just thought it was shrinkage,” says Dyani Riley, a third-year journalism student at Hampton.
“I tried to hang on to every little hair I could,” Morgan recalls. With the help of her “magical hairstylist,” as she puts it, they would use crochet nets to sew in faux locs to mask the thinning. But as she lost more and more hair from the back, it became increasingly difficult to hide. Then one morning, Morgan woke up to find some of her hair completely detached.
“I was like, okay, it's time.”
That spring break, alongside her mom and sister, Morgan shaved her head. “I only have follicles right here,” she says, pointing to the very front of her scalp.
Morgan’s biggest challenge wasn’t the hair loss itself, but how her upbringing shaped her perception of beauty. “I feel like most Black moms will try to do everything that they can to ‘fix’ you,” she reflects. “So it makes you think that what is different about you is wrong.”
This is something many young Black women face: diffidence from the scrutiny of their mothers. Like them, Morgan began to question her self-worth. “I felt like something was wrong with me,” Morgan admits. “If you go to my camera roll, you'll see selfies of me like crazy, from 2021 to 2022. Soon, it just got less and less and less.”
At the end of the day, Morgan’s main goal is to feel beautiful again. By accepting who she truly is now, she’s getting to know a whole new version of herself.
“Morgan is someone who is of service to others, and Morgan is someone who is secure in herself to a point where it makes others secure in themselves too.”
As she begins this new chapter, Morgan remains grounded in faith and gratitude. “I always tell everyone during this era of me being here that God has allowed me to become the woman that I’m not yet.”
With the Lord by her side, Morgan trusts that the process of becoming her true self is ongoing. While her story is far from over, the goal is clear: to impact others. Morgan especially hopes to help other Black women struggling with beauty. But little does she know she’s already making it happen.
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