No woman needs the faux gallantry that Will Smith flaunts

“This is a time of healing,” Jada Pinkett Smith posted on Instagram last Tuesday. “And that’s what I’m here for.”
It’s a measure of the time we’re in when no one has asked what on earth she meant exactly. Apparently, this was in response to the fact that her husband, Will Smith, had punched Chris Rock at the Oscars two nights earlier before yelling and cursing at him from his seat, then tearfully accepting a statuette and sort of apologizing.
Apparently she was referring to that. But don’t react to it either. And does she mean that the healing time is spring? Or at this moment? And what is healing? Chris Rock’s face? Or maybe her marriage?
No one can say for sure, and at this point we’re all so used to “cryptic” posts from celebrities when they’re going through breakups or mishaps that we simply accept a jumble of self-help-sounding words as nuggets of wisdom.
In other words, Jada sent a few sentences that kind of made sense, but in reality Jada didn’t say anything.
In this series, she’s clearly going the dignified route. Because what is the alternative? When Chris Rock made his joke at her expense from the stage, Jada expressed her annoyance by appearing to be the only person in the room not laughing.
“Jada, I love you. ‘GI Jane 2’ can’t wait to see it,” Chris Rock said last Sunday night, referring to the 1997 Demi Moore film, for which she shaved her head.
In response, Jada Pinkett Smith, who has spoken publicly about alopecia, sighed with apparent exasperation, her mouth tightened and her eyes rolled.
The crowd laughed their heads off. Will Smith laughed himself to death.
Here you have to wonder what he should have done next. He laughed and then the camera cut out. It is possible that he then looked at his wife. Whatever happened on this beat, next Smith steps onto the stage and Chris Rock gets slapped. Then, as Chris Rock told the crowd and viewing audience, “Will Smith just blew me away,” it was Jada’s turn to laugh.
Everyone was laughing until Will Smith started yelling at Chris Rock. Jada looks at her husband as he yells at the host he just met for the first time and then stares at Rock. Later she and Will sat holding hands.
Jada later beamed again and stayed close to her husband at the after parties where he celebrated his Oscar win. What was the alternative? The men had misbehaved. Chris Rock’s joke was unnecessary and unfunny at best. Will Smith’s reaction was unacceptable in any setting other than one where it’s part of territory to be spoiled and spoiled.
The men misbehaved, but while Jada Pinkett Smith might have been furious with her husband for his part in it – she laughed at the joke and responded with violence – she was certainly also outraged. Finally, we’re certainly past the point where standing up and hitting someone who insults your wife is considered a gallant and loving response. Smith attempted to portray himself as driven by mad love in his later apologies, but all of this with “my wife” is far from where we are. It’s definitely a far cry from Jada Pinkett Smith.
Not only is she a woman capable of sufficiently crushing a weak joke with a simple facial reaction, she is also a woman with her own strong voice and one who knows how to use it.
Married to Will Smith, with whom she has two children, for more than 20 years, she has been vocal about never really wanting to get married and that allowing each other freedom in marriage is key to their staying power, also with other people. “I always told Will, ‘You can do whatever you want as long as you can look in the mirror and you’re okay,'” Jada said in 2013, apparently a few years before revealing her “involvement” with rapper August Alsina during temporarily from wants separated.
She’s not a woman who needs someone hitting someone on her behalf. Is there one more woman? Was there ever a woman or was it just an idea men had of women? Or was that really just an idea you gave men about themselves?
Because while she was the core of the consternation, the butt of the joke, the damsel in distress last weekend, she didn’t play an active role in either of them. She’s a woman who regularly resists being perceived as anyone’s little lady, and yet she’s there, her honor defended with public violence, forced to smile for the cameras and hang on the arm of her victorious husband all night .
I’m not sure if there’s an award for playing this role, but maybe the healing itself is a reward. Whatever that means.
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/no-woman-needs-the-faux-gallantry-will-smith-displayed-41514809.html No woman needs the faux gallantry that Will Smith flaunts