She get it from her daughter—or, at least, that’s what Jada Pinkett Smith says in regard to her newly bald head. After wearing her hair cropped for years, the 49-year-old Red Table Talk host and producer debuted a new look on Monday, posting a mother-daughter selfie to Instagram showing off their twinning shorn heads, with the caption:
“Willow made me do it because it was time to let go BUT … my 50’s are bout to be Divinely lit with this shed❣️😜”
Willow’s own caption was included in the reveal, which read: “💕🙏🏾a gift is pure when it is given from the heart to the right person at the right time and at the right place, and when we expect nothing in return🙏🏾”
To whom it was a gift remains in question, but Pinkett Smith was first transparent about her hair loss during Red Table Talk’s first season in 2018, sharing: “It was terrifying when it first started. I was in the shower one day and had just handfuls of hair in my hands and I was just like, ‘Oh my god, am I going bald?’” (h/t People magazine). “It was one of those times in my life where I was literally shaking in fear. That’s why I cut my hair, and why I continue to cut it,” she added.
Though she hasn’t spoken on it much since, Pinkett Smith echoed the concerns of many women struggling with hair loss or alopecia when she admitted: “My hair has been a big part of me...Taking care of my hair has been a beautiful ritual and having the choice to have hair or not. And then one day to be like, ‘Oh my god, I might not have that choice anymore.’”
Pinkett Smith has typically worn her hair short in the years since, but also explained that she’d “gotten every kind of test there is to have,” but to no avail, saying: “They don’t know why.”
Whether or not her new look was an explicit nod to that ordeal remains unknown, but the results are gorgeous—and hopefully, inspiring to other women going through the same.
“I really had to put it into a spiritual perspective, like the higher power takes so much from people,” Pinkett Smith said in 2018. “People are out here with cancer. People have sick children. I watch the higher power take things every day,” she continued, explaining that the added perspective “really did settle me.”