Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bald Woman

Why do bald women make us uncomfortable?

Let’s unpack the cultural baggage — the misogynoir, the anxious masculinity, the Fear of the Weird— behind Chris Rock’s joke and Will Smith’s slap (with a little help from Isaac Hayes, Pat Evans — the badass with the bullwhip on those Ohio Players covers — and the warrior women from Black Panther).

Danai Gurira as Okoye in Black Panther. © Marvel Studios. Used under the Fair Use provision of copyright law.

If Will Smith bitch-slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars taught us anything, it’s that defending “your” woman’s “honor” went out of fashion around the time Rhett Butler got dentures. Also, pathological masculinity is in need of a shorter, stouter choke chain.

The proximate cause of the smack heard ‘round the world was smack-talking: Rock’s unfunny wisecrack about Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia areata-induced baldness. Even so, the homophobic subtext of the bitch slap reminds us that this was as much about male fragility as it was some Medieval Times idea of gallantry.

Race is the supermassive black hole of American discourse; its moral gravity and historical enormity warp the fabric of any attempt to understand what America means. Because it’s…