Jaden Smith wore a skirt to pal Amandla Steinberg’s prom. (Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)
Jaden Smith has been sporting a gender-non-conforming style for at least three years now and the rapper/actor isn’t slowing down on that anytime soon.
In a Sunday, March 25 tweet, the 19-year-old said, “If I Wanna Wear A Dress, Then I Will, And That Will Set The New Wave… -JADEN SMITH #ICON.”
If I Wanna Wear A Dress, Then I Will, And That Will Set The New Wave…
-JADEN SMITH #ICON— Jaden (@jaden) March 26, 2018
The responses ranged from supportive to detractive.
“Good on you, Jaden,” one fan said. “You look bloody amazing from over here in England. Stay happy!”
“Emperor’s (empower) new clothes,” someone tweeted.
Another said, “Do it Jay you’re the Black Irish Icon Living!!!!”
“You’ll wear that dress by yourself cuhhh 👗,” one person tweeted.
“A new wave of cross-dressing…?” said someone else.
Another simply tweeted, “unfollowed.”
But Smith has remained unbothered by the ongoing criticism.
In 2016, he launched his own clothing line featuring gender-neutral apparel called MSFTS, telling Variety it’s for “the girl that wants to be a tomboy or the boy that wants to wear a skirt, and people try to condemn. We’re here for you. Tell us your stories. If someone at your school’s trying to pick on you, it doesn’t matter because Jaden Smith’s got your back.”
He also explained the importance of unabashedly wearing skirts so that the generation after him won’t have anything to fear.
“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,” he told Nylon magazine in 2016. “It just doesn’t matter. 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.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/3Sd3uNG1fp/?utm_source=ig_embed
