It was big news when Willow Smith shaved her head in 2012. But for Will Smith, it was an important and humbling learning experience as a parent.
In Jay-Z's new "Footnotes of Adnis" video, Smith said he vividly recalls the night Willow shaved her head. She was in the middle of her "Whip My Hair" tour and had expressed that she wanted to go home, but Smith said he pushed her to continue.
"We came downstairs and she had shaved her head bald. She shaved her head bald in the middle of her 'Whip My Hair' tour. I was like, 'Oh, shit,'" he recalled. "I'm looking at that girl and I'm like, 'Got it. I understand. You will not have this trouble out of me ever again. Let's go, baby. We can go.'"
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Smith added that when Willow shaved her head, he realized that a few of his parenting techniques needed to be adjusted because they weren't working.
"For me, it was that soldier that was pushing and wasn't paying any attention whatsoever to what was going on emotionally with this beautiful little creature in front of me," he said. "That was the first part of the collapsing of my father's suit that I was wearing that wasn't mine."
This isn't the first time Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith have expressed their support for Willow's decision.
"When you have a little girl, it's like how can you teach her that you're in control of her body? She can't cut my hair but that's her hair," Will told Parade in 2012. "She has got to have command of her body."
In a Facebook post, Jada echoed the sentiment that it's critical to teach young girls that their bodies belong to them and them alone.
"The question why I would let Willow cut her hair, first the let must be challenged. This is a world where women [and] girls are constantly reminded that they don't belong to themselves — that their bodies are not their own, nor their power or self-determination," she wrote in 2012. "I made a promise to endow my little girl with the power to always know that her body, spirit and her mind are her domain."
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