Jada Pinkett Smith tweeted this photo over the weekend, saying, “Being a fatherless daughter these are the moments I cherish.”
When Willow Smith first hit the scene, I was working in a computer lab in South Central Los Angeles. Little girls would come in with their mothers and sit at a workstation watching YouTube videos of Lady Gaga and Rihanna over and over again.
But when Whip My Hair came out, I and the probably entire computer lab knew the lyrics to that song by the time the month was out. Here we were, a community of brown people, drawn to a little peculiar brown girl worlds beyond ours. Then, 21st Century Girl was released. A little, peculiar brown girl in the lab introduced me to the video. She would sit in the lab in the afternoons while her mother attended Photoshop workshops and direct me to which YouTube videos she wanted to watch. We were mesmerized.
What was it about Willow Smith that kept the little girls at the lab watching over and over? Was it just a matter of limited options? Or is there something else about this child of stars that was drawing us in?
The lab’s been shut down and I don’t pay much attention to gossip and celebrity sites much, so Willow Smith flew below my radar until a few weeks ago when she released “I Am Me” video. If you follow me on twitter, you’d be familiar with my tweets on spirits being free, so naturally, I was drawn to this.
As an adult, I’ve got to wonder, what in the world does a 12 year old know about seeking freedom? But then I quickly remembered my twelve-year old self and her quirky ways and I nodded. Yes, Willow. “I’m me and that’s all I can be.” (Here I clear my throat of the tears threatening to takeover.)
For little brown girls, especially those sitting in similar computer labs, watching the same Lady Gaga-Rihanna-Nicki Minaj zoo over and over again, this is a remarkable video. This shows them another way to be human by someone who looks like them and is closer to them in age. How many other artists or performers are out there being honest like this, shattering stereotypes of what a little brown girl should do, look like, be? Not many.
Mdotwrites sent me the link again on twitter last week, asking “How does a human being turn herself into a brand without becoming an object?” Indeed, we can’t be blind to the fact that Willow Smith is selling a brand. It’s capitalism, after all, that allows her family to be such stars.
But this brand cries and makes me cry. In the Red Table Talks exclusive below, Willow talks about how much she loves her mother and grandmother in between big, heaving, baby-girl sobs. It’s beautifully human.
What do you think of Willow Smith’s evolution happening before our eyes? How do you relate to her, if at all? What do you think of her as an alternative for little girls to look up to?