Hollywood star Will Smith slapping comedian Chris Rock at the 94th Academy Awards made global headlines but the incident also brought the focus on alopecia - a medical disorder that leads to varying degrees of hair loss. During the ceremony, Smith smacked Rock on stage after the latter cracked a joke about the actor's wife Jada Pinkett-Smith.
The joke was in reference to Pinkett-Smith's shaved head because of autoimmune disorder alopecia but it apparently didn't go down well with Smith, who went up to the stage and slapped Rock. Smith, who later won the Best Actor award, tendered a tearful apology while receiving his statuette and said, "Love will make you do crazy things", as his wife looked on sitting in the audience.
Jada had first talked about her condition on her Emmy Award-winning talk show 'Red Table Talk' when she had said, “It was terrifying when it first started. I was in the shower one day and had just handfuls of hair in my hands and I was just like, ‘Oh my god, am I going bald?’ It was one of those times in my life when I was literally shaking in fear."
As the condition entails the loss of hair, it often "affects the self-image and self-esteem" of people suffering from it as per the dermatologists. Mumbai-based dermatologist and hair transplant surgeon Dr. Sonali Kohli has said to PTI that there are multiple kinds of alopecia, largely depending on the degree of autoimmune disorder. The most common type is "alopecia areata", which occurs in about one out of 1,000 people.
"In this type, there could be single or multiple patches of hair loss and both adults and children can get it. Alopecia is a genetic disorder, so children have susceptibility to getting it even if one of their parents have it, but the degree of susceptibility could be different. In this disorder, essentially the immune system attacks hair follicles and causes hair loss." she told the news portal.
Other types of alopecia are -- alopecia totalis (when the entire scalp turns bald); alopecia ophiasis (when even the hair loss is also on occipital, temporal, and parietal regions of the scalp); and alopecia universalis (when the hair loss happens across the entire body).
READ | Oscars 2022: Will Smith apologises to Chris Rock, says 'I reacted emotionally'
As per Dr. Kohli, unlike a disease like cancer which wrecks the body of a patient, this condition is such that it affects the "beauty" and "self-image" of a person due to loss of hair, and while in the case of alopecia areata, some people wear a cap or something, and in case of alopecia totalis, many wear a wig or a hairpiece, it makes people conscious of their image.
(With inputs from PTI)
