It is challenging to forget the infamous 2022 Oscars incident in which actor Will Smith struck comedian Chris Rock for making a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, and her shaved head. Due to alopecia, Pinkett Smith has been shaving her head since 2021.

It’s a sensitive topic, especially for celebrities whose lives are in the public eye.

Talk show host and actor Ricki Lake revealed that she had been thinking about killing herself for over 30 years because she felt self-conscious about her thinning hair.

Lake, who is now 54, was frank about her hair loss and the range of emotions she experienced as she accepted the condition.

Actress and musician Lake revealed she has androgenetic alopecia. After years of struggle, this inherited condition results in severe thinning and male-pattern baldness in both men and women.

With a photo of her shaved head and the words, “It has been crippling, embarrassing, painful, scary, depressed, lonely, all the things,” the now 54-year-old Lake shared an emotional Instagram. I have even occasionally had suicidal thoughts as a result of it. Nobody in my life really understood the severity of the trauma and excruciating pain I was going through. She claims that she is not alone in this and that her purpose is to aid others while also freeing herself from the seclusion she has been experiencing.

According to Lake, after making her acting debut as Tracy Turnblad in the 1988 film Hairspray, she went from “Hairspray to Hairless.” In order to get the 1960s bouffant look for her character, her delicate, virgin hair was quadruply treated over the course of two weeks, stressing her follicles.

Since then, she has been balding—the medical word is telogen effluvium—which has been made worse by drastic weight swings, depression, hormones, and the hair extensions she started wearing to hide her “shame.”

Lake tried everything to recover her hair, including Rogaine, topical treatments, steroid injections, PRP therapy (plasma injections into the scalp), and the prescription medication Propecia, which treats androgenetic alopecia, while keeping her hair loss a secret.

It had no use.

When Ricki Lake hosted her daytime tabloid talk program from 1993 to 2004, she was under pressure from the same exaggerated beauty standards that exist today. Millions of admirers watched her both in the studio and at home.

The mother of two is well-known in Hollywood and has been in films like Mrs. Winterbourne (1996) with Shirley MacLaine and Brendan Fraser and Cry-Baby (1990) with Johnny Depp. She has additionally made an appearance on television, playing Doug’s sister in King of Queens.

In addition to being a documentary filmmaker, she has lately made appearances on The X Factor: Celebrity and Masked Singer, so she has never been out of the spotlight.

Lake’s 2012 resurrection of her former talk show with Ricki was only renewed for one season, despite receiving a Daytime Emmy for it.

Lake was very saddened by the suicide of her ex-husband, jewelry designer Christian Evans, in 2017. They were wed from 2012 to 2015 and had a strong relationship. She claims that her loss was profound. She acknowledged to People, “I actually had depression. It was worrisome when I was unable to leave my bed at certain points. Since I tend to be an upbeat person, not feeling that way paralyzed me.

Given the kind of stress she was under in her personal and professional lives, it was not surprising that her hair was falling out.

In an interview with 2022 People, Lake acknowledged, “I was afraid of coming out. because I was aware of no female discussing female baldness in public.

“I was at my lowest point. I made the decision to take charge. Lake claimed that she told her then-boyfriend her secret and informed him of her plan to shave her head. He praised her and assured her of her attractive appearance.

Thanks to her boyfriend’s support and the affection of her close friends, Lake rang in the new year on February 2, 2022, sporting a fresh appearance.

She shaved her head in an Instagram post where she also described her existence as a “quiet hell.”

She stated that it wasn’t intentional to publish the message on the first day of the new year. I just wanted to be free of this agony in silence.

She had no idea that her hair would keep growing, giving her this time a full head of lovely, flowing gray hair. “When I shaved my head, I had no notion that it would grow back. It seems to be a miracle.

To commemorate the third anniversary of the day she reclaimed her authority, Lake uploaded the footage that was shot when she first shaved her head. She writes in the title, “In this video, you can witness me reach a place of calm, emancipation, and most importantly, self-love and self-acceptance. After three years, I can genuinely state that I still cherish and adore my naturally gray and oftentimes uncontrolled head of hair.

Whether she gets a buzz cut or her now-naturally gray hair, Lake still looks stunning. We are so appreciative that Ricki Lake bravely shared her story since anyone going through a circumstance like this would surely find it helpful!