Olivia Bentley has defended Will Smith after his violent outburst at the Oscars, as she said she was "shamed over hair loss" like his wife Jada Pinkett Smith.
The Made in Chelsea star, 26, shared her own personal battle with alopecia, and said she began losing her hair when she started taking the contraceptive pill in her teens.
Jada, who was also diagnosed with alopecia in 2018, sighed and rolled her eyes when Chris Rock made a gag about her shaved head, and despite Will initially laughing at the joke, he soon leapt on stage and smacked the comedian around the face.
Olivia said while she doesn’t “condone violence”, she said it was “probably really hard for Will to witness the pain Jada had already gone through learning to live with alopecia”.
She said her hair began falling out when she was 16, but after a few weeks, the bald patches got worse and she was diagnosed with the condition.
Olivia said she had been “bullied and trolled” over her hair loss, and said the shame felt “raw”.
“Losing my hair left me really embarrassed. I would cry about it all the time. I hated it. I lived in hats, wore hair extensions and did whatever I could to cover it up,” she said in an op-ed for The Sun.
She then revealed at 17, she was cruelly dumped by her boyfriend, who said he didn’t want to have kids with her “because he didn’t want them to be bald”.
Olivia said she managed to “hide” her hair loss at school, nut when she joined the E4 reality show in 2016, she was targeted by cruel trolls.
“People would constantly make b*tchy comments, like, ‘Her hair looks s**t’, or, ‘Why does her hair look like that?’
“I was even called a ‘bald b*tch’ on Instagram after speaking openly about my hair loss for the first time,” Olivia confessed.
She said she was made to feel “really insecure”, and criticised Chris for making the joke about Jada’s hair loss.
“It’s a cheap shot. She was targeted cruelly. A woman’s looks should never be the butt of a joke,” she fumed.
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