This is Willow Smith. She's the daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.
You might also know her from that BELOVED hit single, "Whip My Hair." It was the greatest bop of 2010!
She was only 10 years old when that song dropped, and in the past seven years, she's done a lot of growing up.
So in a recent interview with Girlgaze, Willow opened up about what it was like being a kid in the spotlight. And she did NOT hold back — describing the experience as "absolutely, excruciatingly terrible."
“Growing up and trying to figure out your life…while people feel like they have some sort of entitlement to know what’s going on, is absolutely, excruciatingly terrible," she said. "And the only way to get over it, is to go into it."
"You can’t change your face. You can’t change your parents. You can’t change any of those things."
Willow also described the ways in which fame can be harmful to a young person's mental health:
I feel like most kids like me end up going down a spiral of depression, and the world is sitting there looking at them through their phones; laughing and making jokes and making memes at the crippling effect that this lifestyle has on the psyche.
And she says she felt like she only had two choices in life: either embrace the fame that was coming her way, or hide herself from society forever:
When you’re born into it, there are two choices that you have; I’m either going to try to go into it completely and help from the inside, or…no one is going to know where I am…and I’m really going to take myself completely out of the eye of society. There’s really no in-between.
Thanks for opening up, Willow. We're glad to see that you're doing well today!
Remember, folks: Kids are just kids, no matter how famous they are.
