I still can’t figure out why Baltimore native Jada Pinkett Smith gives a flying foxtail on a Friday about what a comedian says about her beautiful bald head.
I know we don’t talk about Jada — there are consequences — but this space isn’t being broadcast around the world and frankly, I doubt L.A. celebrities have given up the Hollywood Reporter in favor of this gritty city’s ink-stained publication, so let’s risk it.
Pinkett Smith arrived on the red carpet in a blaze of forest green and the fashion world swooned, laying every admiration at her feet. The Jean Paul Gaultier couture gown, with a train nearly as long as she was tall, bathed her in a mysterious Mother Earth like glow. Her smile beckoned and her chameleon eyes sparkled, daring anyone to even look beyond her masterfully sculpted brows.
No one dared. Except for Chris Rock. And even he wasn’t serious about it.
But her reaction was as if she’d been mortally wounded by a joke from a divorced nearly 60-something who can’t hold a candle to her.
Pinkett Smith walked in like she owned the place, a future Oscar winner a mere decoration on her arm, and somehow before the show was over she was a victim.
Of a bad joke. A tasteless, insensitive, puny little joke.
Don’t get me wrong — any health challenge is not puny to the person dealing with it. And Black women are known to be sensitive about our hair from way too many years of American beauty and culture experts telling us it wasn’t good enough, straight enough, long enough or pretty enough.
These days, from L.A. to New York, women being bald is widely accepted, whether it’s from alopecia or too much processing. We’ve come a long way from the shock that was Grace Jones.
Still, it would be accurate to say Black women have ahem, a hair-trigger about that particular subject. So maybe Pinkett Smith should have cleaned Rock’s clock. But she didn’t. Instead, well, we all know what happened.
In the aftermath, I was struck by the number of people who in defending the indefensible, saw her husband’s actions as finally someone standing up for Black women.
The hashtag #ProtectBlackWomen trended on Twitter as many of the couple’s supporters reacted. The social media response seemed to ignore that there are so many other avenues to protect Black women — we don’t need to choose Slap Street as our first turn.
How about we ensure free education and technical training to those not on a college track, reduce or cancel student loans, support local Black women entrepreneurs through grants and mentorships, offer more child care assistance, improve family leave, make SNAP benefits more useful and less punitive, develop programs that focus on improving Black women’s mental and physical health, especially pregnant women of color, enforce nondiscriminatory hiring practices, increase the minimum wage, pass the Crown Act everywhere, nominate and elect more Black women to any and every open political office, and on and on.
Last fall, the FBI released data showing that there were at least four Black females murdered every day in 2020. That same year, Baltimore saw more killings of women and girls, with many stemming from domestic violence.
Clearly, there is an urgent need to protect Black women — and a long list of ways to do so. Will Smith choose the wrong way. And Pinkett Smith apparently knows that.
His choice was the one that allows so many to simply deflect and deny the need for those protections and instead to turn their misguided attention to a favorite topic of black on black violence, which has become its own kind of sick joke among some commentators. The punchline is always Chicago.
Despite a lack of defenders — or perhaps, because of it — many Black women are doing fine standing up for themselves. The most recent public example being future Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
For starters, Judge Jackson showed up at her confirmation hearing with sisterlocks, a natural hairstyle that I saw as one giant leap for all Black womankind. Here was an accomplished woman with a momentous job interview and she felt no need to change or account for even one hair on her head.
The clowns in Congress asked silly questions, many that surely should have been jokes — are babies racist? — but were quite unfunny. Jackson’s demeanor remained dignified, composed and persistently placid. There was an eye roll or two that Pinkett Smith could probably relate to.
Her husband kept his seat throughout. His support was no louder than the suit he wore that perfectly matched the color of his wife’s jacket.
So yes, support Black women. Protect Black women. Uplift Black women.
But keep your hands to yourself.
____
Michelle Deal-Zimmerman is senior content editor for features and an advisory member of The Sun’s Editorial Board.
