Jada Pinkett Smith is not here for critics shaming her children.
The actress opened up on the new episode of her Facebook Watch series, Red Table Talk, about the criticism she received for allowing her daughter, Willow Smith, to cut off her hair at 12-years-old and her son Jaden Smith‘s decision to wear a skirt.
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“I got shamed a lot for Willow,” said the actress. “But Jaden — that was hardcore. I think as Jaden got older, and he did the Louis Vuitton, and he was wearing a skirt and then he isn’t what people consider your typical Black man, which is like, what is that supposed to mean?”
The episode is titled “Mom Shaming: The New Epidemic” and features fellow actress Jessica Alba and model Ashley Graham. In 2016, Jaden was featured in a Louis Vuitton campaign and wore a skirt alongside three female models in skirts. After the success of Willow’s 2012 hit single Whip My Hair, she decided to shave off her hair.
“For me, looking at how my children were being affected, that’s what counts,” said Pinkett Smith. “When people are like, ‘Oh, my God! I can’t believe you shaved Willow’s head.’ If they could have seen this child’s expression of freedom, looking at her hair falling to the ground, so me as a mom looking at that, experiencing that with her, there is nothing that anyone could say to me to tell me that it was wrong.”
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She added, “Not one person, because I was there, I was looking at her, I saw her face, I knew the journey that she and I took together to get to that point. And so it didn’t matter what anybody said.”
Willow followed up with how the backlash made her feel.
“Specifically with the African American community, I kind of felt like me and Jaden were like shunned a little bit, like we’re not gonna take pride in them because they’re too different,” said Willow. “Even some of our family members, I would feel they thought, ‘You’re too different.'”
Pinkett Smith declared how she felt folks view her family.
“They weren’t raised typically, and I think, especially for our community, it was something new,” she said.
Watch the latest episode of Red Table Talk below.
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