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Jada Pinkett Smith first shared her struggle with alopecia back in 2018, on an episode of Red Table Talk. She described losing “handfuls of hair” in the shower, a “terrifying” experience. “It was one of those times in my life where I was literally shaking with fear,” she said on the show, per CNN.
In the years since, that condition has become both a part of Pinkett Smith’s identity and appearance and the unfortunate butt of jokes on national television. Now, in the actress’s memoir Worthy, she’s opening up about her full journey with the condition, how deeply her struggle with alopecia affected her, and — in an exclusive interview with SheKnows — why she hopes others with alopecia can let go of the stigma around it.
As Pinkett Smith recalls in the memoir, she had noticed issues with hair falling out years ago, assuming they were due to hormonal changes that would fix themselves. “And I was right,” she remembered. “After a month or so, the condition went away.”
It wasn’t until 2017 that she experienced “a jolt I couldn’t ignore.” While showering, Pinkett Smith says, “a wad of hair” fell into her hands, “with more falling on the tile of the shower and flowing down the drain.” She described feeling a “body-shaking panic,” writing, “I’ve been in panic mode in my life but nothing like this. My heart is quaking with Oh my God, oh my God, WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?”
A doctor told her she might be suffering from alopecia, “but it was probably temporary and brought on by stress.” He gave her steroid shots to stem the loss, but Pinkett Smith’s hair continued to fall out. “Refusing to go into a depression over what I believed was caused by aging and years of overworking my hair,” she decided to cut and style it to cover the bald patches.
Right before COVID-19 lockdowns began, Pinkett Smith’s hair began falling out once more. She tried steroid shots again, but it was difficult to determine a prognosis for the condition. “Alopecia is an autoimmune condition and every case is different,” Pinkett Smith wrote. “My hair loss could go on for a short time, a long time, or the rest of my life. It could get better or become more severe. My doctor told me, ‘We will have to just wait and see.'”
The years passed, and Pinkett Smith decided to shave her head and own alopecia as part of her story. Then came the 2022 Oscars, when Chris Rock’s “G.I. Jane Two” joke — a jab at Pinkett Smith’s alopecia — resulted in Will Smith infamously slapping the comic. Pinkett Smith, who described being unsure whether the fight was real or a skit, said she initially rolled her eyes at the joke, not because it hurt her feelings, but because she knew how it would affect others.
“It was not because of the jab at my alopecia but, honestly, about the people I had met whose condition was far worse than mine,” she wrote. “That was indeed a very light joke, as many expressed, but it was not about me. I was frustrated that the majority of folks can’t seem to understand how devastating alopecia can be. My heart broke for the many who live in shame, the children who have committed suicide after being teased and taunted by their classmates. And now the Oscars, in all its political correctness, was telling the world it was okay to make jokes at the expense of a woman suffering from alopecia?”
“It was disheartening,” Pinkett Smith continued. “And I didn’t take personal offense. I took offense because the condition of alopecia was being mocked.”
It’s that shame, Pinkett Smith tells SheKnows, that she most hopes people with alopecia can someday let go of.
“I carried so much shame for so long about so many different experiences in my life,” Pinkett Smith says. “And I know that a lot of people who suffer from alopecia have shame about their condition. And one of the things about this book that I’m hoping, you know, people will embrace and receive is that there’s no need to have shame about any of it.”
The challenges everyone faces in life — conditions like alopecia being one of them — are “all part of the journey,” Pinkett Smith says. “It’s all part of what I call the divine curriculum. We’re all here to kind of learn, you know, and so really alleviating, freeing ourselves up from our self judgment. And recognizing that any judgment that anybody has about someone else is them judging themselves… That has been the biggest lesson to me throughout all of this, and has been my biggest peace and freedom.”
There’s “so much shame around alopecia,” she says, and through Worthy, “I would really want to help soften, dissolve, and dismantle that.”
Before you go, read about other celebrities who’ve opened up about their chronic or rare health conditions:
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