17-YEAR-OLD Willow Smith – often just known as Willow – is probably best known for her 2010 single Whip My Hair and for being the daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.
She has a brand new album out so is the cover star of this month’s issue of Girlgaze magazine to promote it – and she’s spoken in-depth about what it’s like growing up with world famous parents.
And it’s a really revealing insight into her unique situation
She has thoughts on the mindset of child stars, as well as those with celebrity parents:
Growing up and trying to figure out your life… while people feel like they have some sort of entitlement to know what’s going on, is absolutely, excruciatingly terrible— and the only way to get over it, is to go into it.
You can’t change your face. You can’t change your parents. You can’t change any of those things. So I feel like most kids like me end up going down a spiral of depression, and the world is sitting there looking at them through their phones; laughing and making jokes and making memes at the crippling effect that this lifestyle has on the psyche.
She says that there is no middle ground in her situation:
“When you’re born into it, there are two choices that you have; I’m either going to try to go into it completely and help from the inside, or… no one is going to know where I am… and I’m really going to take myself completely out of the eye of society. There’s really no in-between.”
Given her brother Jaden is in the spotlight just as much, the lack of privacy and pressure on all the Smith children would be the same
Some people recognised that this isn’t about the money that they have, but more identifying a different kind of psychological pressure on people in her position – and Willow is winning praise for her openness
You can read the full interview with Willow here.
