After buzzing her hair to a close fade this summer at the urging of daughter Willow, Jada Pinkett Smith is doing her best to embrace her ongoing hair loss. On Tuesday, the 50-year-old actress, musician and Red Table Talk host-creator gave fans an update via Instagram as she showed off her latest follicular development.
“Now at this point, I can only laugh,” she said as she pointed out a faint line of bare skin atop her head, reminding followers of her struggle with alopecia. She further noted that the new loss happened “just all of a sudden one day...it just showed up like that.”
As Pinkett Smith shared when first revealing her alopecia diagnosis during Red Table Talk’s first season in 2018, her initial hair loss was just as sudden. “It was terrifying when it first started; I was in the shower one day and then just handfuls of hair just in my hands,” she recalled (h/t Page Six). “It was one of those times in my life that I was literally shaking with fear.”
Now, she’s seemingly taking it in stride, referencing her previous efforts to camouflage her hair loss, she noted: “And this is going to be a little bit more difficult for me to hide, so I thought I’d just share it so y’all not asking any questions.”
In the post’s accompanying caption, Pinkett Smith teased an even more extreme approach, joking: “Mama’s gonna have to take it down to the scalp so nobody thinks she got brain surgery or something😜
“Me and this alopecia are going to be friends … period!😆,” she added.
To be fair, Pinkett Smith has more than pulled off her closely cropped look, as evidenced by her appearance at the Hollywood premiere of her latest film, The Matrix: Resurrection on December 18. Wearing a strapless red minidress with a massive train by Giambattista Valli Couture, she and stylist Georgia Medley accessorized the look with shimmering red tights and shoes, highlighting Pinkett Smith’s gorgeous bare head with a dramatic single Swarovski ear cuff.
As the actress teased in Tuesday’s video, there may be more bedazzled moments to come as she leans into her hair loss. “You know mama’s gonna put some rhinestones in there, and I’m just gonna make me a little crown,” she said, preening for the camera. “That’s what mama’s gonna do.”