Just minutes after Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock during Sunday’s live Oscars broadcast for joking about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) took to Twitter to praise the actor. “#Alopecia nation stand up!” the congresswoman wrote in a tweet she then quickly deleted. “Thank you #WillSmith Shout out to all the husbands who defend their wives living with alopecia in the face of daily ignorance & insults.” Pinkett Smith revealed that she had alopecia for the first time in 2018 and has been open about struggling with the condition since. Pressley, who opened up about her own alopecia diagnosis in 2020, continued, “Women with baldies are for real men only only. Boys need not apply.” On Thursday, Pressley released another statement on Twitter, elaborating that she did not “endorse violence in any form.” The congresswoman concluded her second statement by saying, “I’m a survivor of violence. I'm a proud Alopecian. The psychological toll we carry daily is real. Team Jada always. That’s that on that.”
