Jada Pinkett Smith thinks her daughter Willow Smith "came into a womanhood" when she shaved her head this month.
The 19-year-old singer recently teamed up with Tyler Cole for a 24-hour performance about anxiety at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary in Los Angeles and as part of the piece, the ‘Whip My Hair’ hitmaker’s collaborator chopped off her locks, just as her mother walked into the gallery.
Jada said: "The first time you shaved your head [was] when you were 12 years old. But this time, you came into a womanhood. So, kudos to you."
Willow felt she was able to she a lot of "emotional baggage" by shaving her head.
She said: "I feel like I was just shedding a lot of history and emotional baggage. Six, seven, years of emotion, I just let it go."
The exhibit had been planned for "a while" but the ‘Bad Moms’ actress thinks her daughter captured the mood of the nation amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking on the latest episode of ‘Red Table Talk’, she told Willow: "The coronavirus pandemic is causing great fear, anxiety — even panic… You put yourself in a box, dealing with eight stages of anxiety in 24 hours.
"It was really timely, even though you’d been planning this for a while. But the fact that it was this isolation, confinement we’re experience now [was relatable]."
On this week’s episode, Jada, Willow and Adrienne Banfield-Norris were joined by motivational speaker Jay Shetty and psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula to talk about managing anxiety and fear during the COVID-19 pandemic, and stressed that it is OK to ask a partner for some space while quarantining together.
Jay said: "If you’re just seeking more space in your relationship, I think one of the bigger mistakes we often make is that we express what we want but we don’t explain why we want it.
"So, if you just go up to your partner and say, ‘I want space’ or ‘I need space,’ they don’t know why you want it and so now they’re confused. Now they’re filling in the text of going, ‘Oh maybe he or she doesn’t like me.’
"If you explain why you want what you want then someone has the opportunity to say, ‘Oh I get that, I wanted it too.’ Because often you find that both of you wanted the space."
Jada added: "I think that’s true because if you say to somebody, ‘I need space,’ sometimes that’s a trigger for one step towards divorce. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that. It just means, ‘Hey I need two hours, please.’ "
Jada Pinkett Smith: Willow’s gone into womanhood now
