TV presenter Ranvir Singh has spoken about her experience of living with alopecia.
Singh, 44, discussed her personal experience of living with the autoimmune disorder, which causes sufferers’ hair to fall out, while reflecting on Will Smith’s outburst at the Oscars after mention of his wife’s hair.
Smith, 53, stormed the stage at the awards ceremony and struck comedian Chris Rock after he made a joke which referred to Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head.
Pinkett Smith, 50, has previously spoken about suffering from alopecia.
Singh, who was standing in as a presenter on ITV’s Lorraine, discussed the condition with Dr Amir Khan, who said eight million women in the UK suffer from hair loss.
She said: “Me [being] one of them – I can show you. We were at Thorpe Park on mother’s day and I feel dreadful about the photographs because your hair’s going backwards.
“I’ve always had a fringe, I’ve found ways to cover it, I use coloured sprays and things. I’ve got a patch in the middle, I’ve got a patch at the back.”
To illustrate, Singh lifted an area of her hair back to reveal a bald patch.
She added: “It started when my dad had a heart attack and when he died, when I was eight or nine, and it’s never come back, so I understand a little bit of the real discomfort you live with having it.
“If anything, it’s certainly made us talk about what it is, which at the expense of Jada, Will and Chris, somehow at least we are talking about this and women know that they’re not alone.”
In an episode of Pinkett Smith’s Facebook show Red Table Talk, posted in 2018, the actress said she had been “having issues with hair loss”.
Pinkett Smith described suffering from alopecia as “terrifying”.
She said: “It was one of those times in my life where I was literally shaking with fear.”
She added that she had chosen to continue cutting her hair as a way of dealing with the sudden hair loss.
In July 2021 Pinkett Smith debuted her buzz cut in an Instagram post captioned: “Willow made me do it because it was time to let go.”
Smith has since apologised for his behaviour at the awards ceremony, saying he had reacted “emotionally” to the joke, but said “violence in all its forms is poisonous and destructive”.