NEWSJada Pinkett Smith Shares Struggle With Alopecia In Vulnerable New Clip: 'At This Point I Can Only Laugh'
Dec. 28 2021, Published 2:49 p.m. ET
Jada Pinkett Smith is opening up about her experience with alopecia.
The 50-year-old actress has been suffering from alopecia — an auto-immune disease characterized by hair loss — for years, and now she is giving an update on her journey.
In a vulnerable clip posted to her Instagram account on Tuesday, December 28, The Matrix actress explained the current status of her hair loss, which appeared to be forming a line on the top of her head.
"Mama's gonna have to take it down to the scalp so nobody thinks she got brain surgery or something 😜," she joked in the caption. "Me and this alopecia are going to be friends … period!😆."
In the clip, she appeared looking striking as always while pointing out the new mark on her scalp. "At this point, I can only laugh," she quipped.
"Y'all know I've been struggling with alopecia," she continued with a smile on her face while zooming in on the newly formed line across the top of her head. "It just showed up like that."
"This is gonna be a little more difficult for me to hide," she continued. "So I thought I'd just share it so y'all not asking any questions."
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But Smith still seemed to have her wits about her despite struggling with the disease, as she reassured her followers that she would be decorating her head with rhinestones or maybe even a crown. "That's what mama's gonna do," she concluded.
The Set It Off alum first revealed her battle with alopecia in 2018, during an episode of her "Red Table Talk" show, where she detailed the frightening experience of first realizing she was suffering from the disease.
"I've been having issues with hair loss," she said at the time, per Page Six. "It was terrifying when it first started. I was in the shower one day and then just handfuls of hair just in my hands … It was one of those times in my life that I was literally shaking with fear.”
"My hair has been a big part of me. Taking care of my hair has been a beautiful ritual," she added.
As the hair loss progressed over the next few months, she began wearing hair wraps to get used to the new lifestyle. "When my hair is wrapped, I feel like a queen," she said.
She also revealed at the time that she received "every kind of test" to determine the cause of the hair loss, but that the results were inconclusive.
