USA TODAY International Edition
Jada Pinkett Smith’s voice matters the most
If you watched the Oscars ceremonies or have given even a moment’s notice to the ensuing coverage, you already know about Will Smith’s slap seen around the world.
Before Chris Rock presented the Oscar for best documentary Sunday, he made a few jokes about audience members. One of them was about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who is bald because of hair loss from alopecia, an autoimmune disorder.
Rock pointed to her, called out her name and said, “I love ya. ‘ G. I. Jane 2’: Can’t wait to see it.”
Will Smith laughed, briefly, but Pinkett Smith’s eye roll wiped that smile off his face. Moments later, as Rock continued to speak, Smith marched onto the stage and smacked him in the head.
Most of us feel something after witnessing this, and our responses are fueled by our life experiences. More on that in a moment. First, let us pause to lift the one voice that matters above all others here.
That belongs to Jada Pinkett Smith. We don’t know what she thinks of her husband’s decision to hit Rock. On Tuesday, a graphic posted to Pinkett Smith’s Instagram account read only: “This is a season for healing and I’m here for it.”
However, it is easy to know what she has had to say about her own journey with hair loss in a culture that does not celebrate bald women, especially if they are Black. Most white Americans have never thought about the ongoing burden of discrimination Black women have endured because of white standards for acceptable hair. Less than two weeks ago the House of Representatives passed the CROWN Act, which bans race- based hair discrimination. It has not passed the Senate.
Against this backdrop, we are still talking about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair.
She has spoken her mind about this on Instagram and on her Emmy Awardwinning show, “Red Table Talk,” which she hosts on Facebook with daughter Willow and mother Adrienne BanfieldNorris – all of which was shared on “Entertainment Tonight” last December.
In one Instagram video, she ran her beautifully manicured nails across her freshly shaved scalp. “Mama’s going to have to take it down to the scalp,” she wrote, “so nobody thinks she got brain surgery or something. Me and this alopecia are going to be friends … period!
In another post, she appeared with Willow, who had a matching buzzcut: “Willow made me do it because it was time to let got BUT… my 50’ s are bout to be Divinely lit with this shed.”
In every instance, her voice is strong, and she is the sole author in this story about her life. I am not suggesting she should shrug off Rock’s insensitive joke. It is one thing to embrace your vulnerability as evidence of your strength. It is something far different when a man tries to reduce you to a punchline.
‘ To hide the coward’
We don’t know whether Rock was aware that Pinkett Smith was bald because of an autoimmune condition.
The bigger debate – the one that exploded on Twitter on Sunday night and is still raging on talk shows and social media – revolves around whether Smith acted appropriately in defense of his wife.
His back story is perhaps instructive. In his 2021 memoir, Smith begins
with a scene of domestic violence from his childhood. His first sentence: “I’ve always thought of myself as a coward.” Smith then explains why.
“When I was nine years old, I watched my father punch my mother in the side of her head so hard that she collapsed. I saw her spit blood. That moment in that bedroom, probably more than any other moment in my life, has defined who I am today.
“Within everything that I have done since then – the awards and accolades, the spotlights and the attention, the characters and the laughs – there has been a subtle string of apologies to my mother for my inaction that day. For failing her in that moment. For failing to stand up to my father. For being a coward.
“What you have come to understand as ‘ Will Smith,’ the alien- annihilating MC, the bigger- than- life movie star, is largely a construction – a carefully crafted and honed character – designed to protect myself. To hide myself from the world. To hide the coward.”
I offer this as neither an excuse nor an explanation for Smith’s physical attack on Rock. That he was willing to share this about his life, and so recently, is a fact we should not ignore.
Not long after he slapped Rock, Smith won the Oscar for his portrayal of Richard Williams, the father of tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams.
From his tearful acceptance speech: “I want to be a vessel for love. I want to say thank you to Venus and Serena. I just spit. I hope they didn’t see that on TV. … That’s what I want to do. I want to be an ambassador of that kind of love and care and concern. …
“I look like the crazy father, just like they said about Richard Williams. But love will make you do crazy things. To my mother, a lot of this moment is really complicated for me.”
Language of love?
I want to be a vessel for love … Love will make you do crazy things … I look like the crazy father …
If you are a survivor of domestic violence, there is no greater conquest in life than to realize that none of this is the language of love.
Our reactions to Smith’s behavior are tied to our experiences or those of people we love, which is why this incident has generated so much conversation beyond the initial shock of witnessing it. How we feel about what Smith did is as much about us as it is him.
Perhaps Jada Pinkett Smith will once again share what’s on her mind. If she does, we should listen. Hers is the voice that matters most.