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Jada Pinkett Smith reveals alopecia battle

Jada Pinkett wearing a white turban [Photo: Getty]
Jada Pinkett wearing a white turban [Photo: Getty]

Jada Pinkett has admitted she’s suffering with hair loss and alopecia.

On the Facebook chat show ‘Red Table Talk’, which Jada co-hosts with her mother, Adrienne Canfield Norris, and her equally as famous daughter, Willow, the actress confronted the problem head on.

The 46-year old actress said: “I’ve been getting a lot of questions about why I’ve been wearing this turban.”

“Well, I’ve been having issues with hair loss. And it was terrifying when it first started.”

Jada Pinkett with her daughter, Willow Smith [Photo: Getty]
Jada Pinkett with her daughter, Willow Smith [Photo: Getty]

Jada said she noticed her hair loss when huge “handfuls of hair” came loose in the shower.

“I was just like ‘Oh my god am I going bald?’ It was one of those times in my life where I was literally shaking with fear,” she explained. “That’s why I cut my hair and continue to cut it.”

Although doctors haven’t yet diagnosed Jada’s condition, she suspects her hair loss is stress related, which is a problem that effects everybody, and is often very hard to manage.

Other topics in older episodes of Red Table Talk have included motherhood and family, with it even discussing Willow Smith’s self harming, something the teen explains started to happen after her hit single ‘Whip My Hair’.

But the Smith’s seem to have an admirable amount of perspective and resilience.

While discussing her alopecia, Jada talks about a “higher power”.

She talks about how she believes the fate of her body lies in this “higher power”, and how by accepting her body’s natural path, and the changes her body is going through, she’s able to overcome the fear of living with less hair.

“People are out here with cancer, with sick children… I watch the higher power take things every day,” she said, adding her hair loss is nothing in comparison.

“When I looked at it from that perspective it did settle me.”

Smith has now started to wear a turban or a wrap around her head, which she pulls off with effortless grace and style.

And she really isn’t letting her condition get her down: “when my hair is wrapped, I feel like a queen,” she said.


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