Academy Awards Shine Light on Alopecia

Will Smith won the Best Actor award for King Richard at last night's Academy Awards ceremony. But he will be best remembered for slapping Oscar Host Chris Rock for making a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith's hair loss.

Pinkett Smith experienced hair loss due to the autoimmune disorder alopecia that impacts the hair follicles, resulting in both bald spots and hair loss.

Pinkett Smith noted during a May 2018 Red Table Talk episode that she had taken “every type of test,” but doctors were still unable to deduce why she started losing her hair.

“Even in my terror and even in my fear and in the moment of just going, ‘Oh, my God, like, why are you so terrified that you might lose your hair?’ I really had to put it in a spiritual perspective of, like, the higher power takes so much from people. People are out here who have cancer, people who have sick children. I watch the higher power take things every day,” she continued. “And, by golly, if the higher power wants to take your hair, that’s hair? When I looked at it from that perspective, it really did settle me.”