Jaden Smith is just 17 years old, but he's already learned a lot from his famous parents, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith.
"The greatest lesson I’ve learned from my parents is to be myself, at all costs, no matter what anybody thinks," Smith told Nylon magazine in a new cover story.
Indeed, the teen is comfortable with who he is. Smith often makes bold fashion choices like wearing skirts, and he's writing a book on philosophy.
"You just have to believe in yourself," the actor-singer elaborated to Nylon. "The world is going to keep bashing me for whatever I do, and I’m going to keep not caring... so 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. 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."
Will Smith, however, thinks he may have taken his parenting style to an extreme.
Smith laughingly told Vanity Fair in February that his lenient parenting style "may have been a mistake. I think we might have gone too far."
But the elder Smith still stands behind his son.
"Jaden is 100 percent fearless, he will do anything," Smith told the magazine. "So 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 just doesn’t concern himself with what people think."
