by Monica A.
Will Smith could be my father any day! And I don't mean that in a weirdly, millennial kink kind of way. In modern history, Will Smith has been an outspoken male activist for equal rights. During an interview in 2012, Will Smith said, "When you have a little girl, it's like, how can you teach her that you're in control of her body? If I teach her that I'm in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she's going to replace me with some other man when she goes out in the world. She can't cut my hair, but that's her hair. She has got to have command of her body. So when she goes out into the world, she's going out with a command that is hers. She is used to making those decisions herself. We try to keep giving them those decisions until they can hold the full weight of their lives."
This thinking is revolutionary for many reasons. In the past generations, parents’ control of a young woman's body has been so immense that it was humanized in TV shows and movies. There are countless examples of fathers stopping their daughters on their way out to the climactic party where her outfit will change how the crush views her.
There has also been past ideals which transcended years of fashion which in a way Will Smith touches on in his comments. Smith understands that as style changes so will the needs and wants of a teenage girl. In the same sense, you can literally watch in the span of time how women went from not even being allowed to show their ankles, to dresses right below their knees, to the leather clad miniskirts of today.
Maybe you could say it was fatherhood that made Smith an activist, or the struggle in his own right for equal opportunities, or his amazing life partner who also happens to be an outspoken feminist. No matter what way you look at it, Will Smith is an instrumental part of the fight for equality.
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