Jada Pinkett Smith, the wife of Will Smith and the Smith family matriarch, found a significant positive in her battle with hair loss. In her case, she struggles with alopecia, an autoimmune disease that causes hair on the face, skin, and body to fall out, with the National Alopecia Areata Foundation reporting that “as many as 6.8 million people in the U.S.” are “affect[ed]” by the disease.
Pinkett Smith, who is often seen wearing a headscarf or rocking a cropped haircut or braids, revealed that those style choices are a result of her hair loss struggles. She opened up about the situaion in a 2018 episode of her Facebook Watch talk show Red Table Talk, saying, “I’mma tell you, it was terrifying when it first started. I was in the shower one day and then just handfuls of hair, just in my hands, and I was just like, ‘Oh my God, am I going bald?'”
Pinkett Smith then described “(feeling) like a queen” in her new arsenal of turbans and head wraps, and explained how she maintains a sense of perspective about her thinning hair. “People are out here who have cancer, people with sick children,” she said, adding, “I watch the higher power take things every day … and if the higher power wants to take your hair? That’s it? God, you want my hair? … When I looked at it from that perspective it really did settle me.”
Written by: Nicki