Christina, I appreciate your insights, and especially how well you expressed the pain of baldness.

However, we also seem to be ignoring the fact that Jada (and all actors) have gained their fame and adulation at least in part from their physical appearance. So commenting on an actor's lack of hair is not equivalent to commenting on the baldness of a woman or man you see on the street.

As you pointed out, Jada remains a beautiful woman. And she is not unique in being a bold, beautiful, bald, black woman. https://www.essence.com/hair/beautiful-black-women-with-bald-heads/ If she does not like her appearance, she has multiple options. She could avoid high profile events. She could wear a wig or a hat or other accoutrement. Or she can go as she is. But to expect others to not comment on her appearance would be bizarre and entitled.

Chris Rock's joke was not particularly clever or funny. But his job on the stage is exactly to poke fun at how we have deified professional acting and treat media stars as sacred cows. His comments are not so much about degrading Jada, as about making all of us think about why someone's hair styling is so important. His job was to be irreverent, and to help us take ourselves less seriously. If we rule that off limits, then we deprive ourselves of new ways to see ourselves, and of ways to grow and improve.