Child actor and musician-turned-model Jaden Smith, the 17-year-old son of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, opens up about his dress-wearing modeling career in Nylon fashion and beauty magazine’s first ever male cover issue.
Smith says he’s wearing women’s clothing and normalizing the fashion trend now so that future generations of young boys who wear dresses won’t be bullied by their peers.
“So, you know, in five years when a kid goes to school wearing a skirt, he won’t get beat up and kids won’t get mad at him,” The Karate Kid star told the magazine. “I’m taking the brunt of it so that later on, my kids and the next generations of kids will all think that certain things are normal that weren’t expected before my time.”
In January, the 17-year-old provocateur was announced as the new face of fashion house Louis Vuitton’s Spring/Summer 2016 women’s collection.
Smith says he’s going to keep sporting black leather dresses, despite what his critics may say.
“You just have to believe in yourself, you know,” Smith told Nylon. “The world is going to keep bashing me for whatever I do, and I’m going to keep not caring. I’m going to keep doing the same things — I’m going to keep doing more things. I’m going to take most of the blows for my fellow MSFTS.”
Jaden’s father, Will Smith, called his son “fearless” in his artistic expression.
“Jaden is 100 percent fearless,” the Concussion actor said during an interview with BBC Radio 1Xtra. “He will do anything. As a parent it’s scary – it’s really terrifying, but he is completely willing to live and die by his own artistic decisions and he doesn’t concern himself with what people think.”
Jaden, taking his father’s words to heart, says, “the greatest lesson I’ve learned from my parents is to be myself, at all costs, no matter what anybody thinks.”
Smith will become Nylon’s first male model to pose on the cover in the magazine’s 17-year history.
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