For describing her seemingly unconventional marriage as she saw it, she has become the villain.
In her new memoir, Worthy, the actor Jada Pinkett Smith quotes the Marvel Comics superhero Wanda Maximoff to point out how women are often punished by double standards.
For weeks, Pinkett Smith has been the subject of widespread criticism and mockery over revelations in her 400-page memoir—including the jaw-dropping assertion that she and her husband, the A-list actor Will Smith, have been secretly separated since 2016. For describing her sometimes-messy and seemingly unconventional marriage as she saw it, she has become the villain—as if she had somehow forfeited the right to tell her own story in her own way.
“How Jada Pickett Smith is moving, it don’t really make you want to be that close with a woman,” the hip-hop star Rick Ross said via Instagram Live last week. “It will really make you reconsider ever being married. Damn, baby. You talking about so much personal business.” The onslaught of criticism directed at Pinkett Smith inspired a slew of internet memes, many of which have had the same central themes: that she is oversharing and, through her candor about the disappointment she has felt in her marriage, emasculating her husband in the process.
In her book, Pinkett Smith willingly accepts responsibility for some of the trouble in her marriage.
