Willow Smith has experienced racism, depression, and feelings of being shunned
by her community — she was even forced to see a social worker. Here's why the life of Will
Smith's daughter is anything but perfect. Willow Smith didn't listen to "Gettin' Jiggy
Wit It" and "Wild Wild West" and decided that she wanted to be a performer. As a child, it
wasn't her dad's peppy hip-hop hits but her mom's darker nu metal songs that spoke to her soul.
Starting at the age of 4, Willow was allowed to watch Jada Pinkett Smith's band, Wicked Wisdom,
perform for crowds that were sometimes hostile. In an interview with L'Officiel,
Willow recalled witnessing the aggressive behavior of racist metal gatekeepers,
including those who threw bottles at her mom. While speaking to Billboard, Willow said:
"There were a lot of racist and sexist people that she had to deal with who were very vocal
about the fact that they were racist and sexist. I got to see people get very rowdy
and say some things that you should never hear somebody say to your own mother."
When Willow decided to start recording rock music herself, she
told Glamour UK that there was some pushback from label executives solely because she was
Black. She's also received hate on social media from rock fans who evidently don't
believe she belongs. Speaking to The Face, she said of their resentment and spite, ​
"I try not to look too deep into it because I don't want to get
attached to those negative emotions." "Whip My Hair" was released just one day
before Willow's 10th birthday, and soon, she found herself touring with Justin Bieber.
"She's pretty much the boss wherever she goes."
But while she followed up the infectious earworm with the less successful singles "21st Century
Girl" and "Fireball," a debut album featuring her debut song never materialized. For Smith,
achieving success at such a young age had its drawbacks. She told The Face that it put immense
pressure on her to keep her nose to the grindstone — and it was to her own detriment. She said:
"When you have to work and a lot of people's incomes are on the line if
you don't perform well, that's not conducive with childhood."
On top of having so much riding on her continued success, she found herself
in a dark place and soon realized that she badly needed to press pause on her
music career. She told NME that she even tried giving up singing for good, saying,
"I didn't make music for a whole year, which is insane for me."
However, Willow soon discovered that she loved music too much to leave it.
When the topic of forgiveness came up on "Red Table Talk" in 2018, Willow had an
honest conversation with her parents. She spoke about the way they behaved after they saw that
"Whip My Hair" could be a launching pad for a long hip-hop music career. Willow told her mom:
"I definitely had to forgive you and Daddy for that whole 'Whip My Hair'
thing. It was mostly Daddy because he was so harsh at certain times."
Willow revealed that she didn't feel like her parents were listening to her
concerns. On top of that, she felt guilt because she realized that they were,
at least, trying to help her in some way.
But according to Will Smith, it took an extreme act of rebellion to make him realize that he
was in the wrong for ignoring his young daughter's complaints about the adult
stresses she was suddenly expected to endure. Shaving her head was very much
intended to send everyone a message about how she felt about her success. Willow told Spin:
"I can't be the 'Whip My Hair' girl if I don't have any hair."
When her dad saw her bald head, it made him rethink the way he was parenting his
daughter. He recalled during his "Will Smith: An Evening of Stories with Friends" event:
"I'm like, 'Got it. I got it, baby. I'm sorry. I apologize.'"
In 2014, Willow and Jaden Smith gave T Magazine readers some insight into
just how different their lives were from your typical teen.
Their revelations inspired the creation of many listicles of their wildest remarks,
such as Willow's summation of her brief public school adventure. She said to T Magazine:
"It was the worst experience because I was depressed."
On "Red Table Talk," Willow recalled Jada Pinkett Smith being mom-shamed
for homeschooling her children. She also said that she felt like the Black community treated
her and her brother like outsiders because of the way they were raised.
"I felt like me and Jaden were shunned a little bit."
In 2017, Willow told Vulture that she also found it hard to relate to people her age, saying,
"Even the language that kids nowadays use, I'm just not used to it."
When Will Smith appeared on "Red Table Talk" in 2018, he and Jada Pinkett Smith opened up
about their marital issues. Will recalled an explosive argument that he and Jada had
over the 40th birthday party he had planned for her. He said that he did not react well
when Jada let him know that she felt like Will had used the occasion to stroke his own ego.
"I snapped in front of Willow. It was the only time in her childhood she ever saw me snap."
This upset Willow, and Will apologized to her as the waterworks started flowing. In a
2019 interview with People, Willow revealed what was going through her
mind during her parents' lowest point in their marriage, saying,
"I was like, 'I'd rather them divorce than keep being unhappy in the same house.'"
The couple did separate for a time but ultimately decided that their marriage was worth saving. And
while Willow told The Independent that her parents just don't understand her sometimes,
seeing as they weren't thrust into the spotlight from birth, she does understand
them and doesn't mind hearing about their relationship woes. She told the outlet:
"From a very young age it was clear to me they weren't just my parents. They're full,
other people who have their own emotions."
On "The Yungblud Podcast," Willow spoke
about some of the negative emotions she grappled with early in her music career.
"For so long, I had a lot of fear that was just in my heart."
"I felt extremely unsafe."
Unfortunately, her decision to take a break from performing and recording
music didn't make everything better. She recalled on "Red Table Talk":
"I was kind of just in this gray area of,
'Who am I? Do I have a purpose? Is there anything I can do besides this?'"
After she made the decision to forgo recording a hip-hop album,
Willow found herself uncertain of what to do next.
"It was just so crazy and I was plunged into this black hole, and I was cutting myself."
In an interview with People, Willow said that she managed to pull herself out of that dark
place by reaching the realization that harming herself wasn't helping
matters. What did help was looking inward and embracing what she saw. She told the outlet:
"It seemed literally psychotic after a certain
point because I had learned to see myself as worthy."
When 13-year-old Willow Smith was photographed laying on the same bed as 20-year-old actor
Moisés Arias, some outlets decided to play the shame game with Willow. Hollywood Life wrote:
"Whoa! Is Willow Smith into older men?"
However, the outlet then proceeded to note that Arias was good friends with Willow's brother and
that there was zero physical contact between Arias and Willow in the image. And when the Smiths were
investigated by the Los Angeles Department of Child and Family Services, social workers were
apparently more concerned about Willow's diet than any potentially inappropriate relationship.
On "Red Table Talk," Jada Pinkett Smith revealed that someone had contacted the department and
accused her and Will of starving their daughter. When it was time for her interview with a social
worker, Willow came up with a way to prove that the allegations were complete nonsense.
"I walked in with a bowl of cereal specially because I
knew that they said you were starving me."
According to Willow, what bothered her most about
being interviewed was what a waste of resources it was. She recalled:
"I was looking at the lady and the whole time I was thinking, 'You could be helping so many kids
right now, and you're wasting your time with a child who has everything that they need.'"
Willow Smith has found musical muses in concepts such as self-acceptance and fringe beliefs like
those of the "light eaters," or breatharians, which are people who claim it's possible to
subsist mostly on air and sunlight. But for her 2022 album "Coping Mechanism,"
she decided to explore territory that was foreign to her and pull a Taylor Swift by
drawing inspiration from heartbreak. Of why she'd avoided the topic before, she told NME,
"I just felt like everyone talks about that,
and it's just boring. But then your girl got her heart broken."
Willow told Spin that the romantic partner who broke her heart was female but tried to
keep the interview steered toward the breakup and its aftermath, not the identity of her
ex. She admitted that she could have handled her relationship difficulties better, saying,
"The biggest problem that I came up against was trying to take the high
road and be the mature one. It gets you into a place where you're actually not being honest."
Smith also opened up to Kerrang! about going through that terrible post-split period during
which thoughts about an ex and what went wrong keep the tears flowing. Willow told the outlet:
"Some days I would just cry on the couch."
And while explaining her title track's lyrics, Willow stated,
"I feel like it just encapsulates this feeling
of something being broken and you don't know how to fix it."
Hence the need for a coping mechanism.
In addition to being a target of trolls due
to her celebrity status, Willow Smith has been confronted with discrimination. In an interview
with Spin, she revealed that one of her most memorable experiences being judged based on her
appearance came when an employee at a high-end clothing store didn't realize who she was.
In Willow's recollection of the episode, she told the employee that she had an account at the store,
to which the employee replied, "You must be mistaken." But Smith didn't need the
employee to type her name into a computer to validate her claim. She was an ambassador
for the store's brand, and her picture was on the wall. Smith told the outlet:
"Obviously, I didn't get what I was going to get because I
felt so humiliated. It wasn't a good feeling."
She's also been on the receiving end of racist remarks intended
to be compliments. Willow said to Billboard:
"I've ran into situations with white men specifically who are like,
'Black girls don't usually look like you,' or, 'Whoa,
your hair is lying down. That's crazy, you actually look pretty!'"
When Smith became a Chanel ambassador, her aim was to inspire other Black women and girls to not let
people like that employee make them feel like they don't belong. Nor should they
allow white men to decide what is beautiful. She told The Telegraph:
"I know a lot of girls that look like me feel that
they're not beautiful. I want them to know that's not true."
If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the
Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness
helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.