In a lengthy post on her Facebook account, actress Jada Pinkett Smith asks if the unbridled amount of criticism and ridicule faced by today's young stars is really just cyberbullying at the hands of the media.
"This last week, I had to really evaluate the communication in regard to our young artists in the media. I was trying to differentiate cyber-bullying from how we attack and ridicule our young stars through media and social networks. It is as if we have forgotten what it means to be young or even how to behave like good ol' grown folk," she wrote on Sunday.
Pinkett Smith, 41, is the mother of two young rising stars -- Jaden, 14, and Willow, 12 -- and asks if we feel that "we can say and do what we please without demonstrating any responsibility simply because they are famous?"
Her questions are derived from a few specific examples of young stars, all of whom provoked quite a response recently.
"Is it okay to continually attack and criticize a famous 19 year old who is simply trying to build a life, exercise his talents while figuring out what manhood and fame is all about as he carries the weight of supporting his family as well as providing the paychecks to others who depend on him to work so they can feed their families as well?," she wrote about pop star Justin Bieber, adding:
"Does that render being called a c**t by an adult male photographer as you try to return to your hotel after leaving the the hospital?"
The actress is refererring to the media attention over Bieber's rough week in London, which culminated in his threatening to "beat the f**king f**k" out of a paparzzo who called him a c**t.
Pinkett Smith also references the media attention pointed at Rihanna and her decision to reunite with Chris Brown, years after he assaulted her:
"Or what about being a young woman in her early twenties, exploring the intracacies of love and power on the world stage?" she wrote, before going on to mention Taylor Swift, who received a fair amount of negative attention following the release of a recent Vanity Fair article:
"And should we shame a young woman for displaying a sense of innocence as she navigates through the murky waters of love, heartbreak, and fame? Are these young people not allowed to be young, make mistakes, grow, and eventually transform a million times before our eyes? Are we asking them to defy the laws of nature because of who they are?"
Pinkett Smith wonders why we can't "congratulate them for the capacity to work through their challenges on a world stage and still deliver products that keep them on top," and would like everyone to imagine themselves at their age with all they have to deal with.
"Most of us would have fallen to the waste side before we could even get to a crashed Ferrari, a controversial romance, several heart breaks ... We WISH we could have had the capacity to accomplish HALF of what they have accomplished along with ALL these challenges they face. But...maybe THAT'S the problem...we WISH we could have or even...we WISH we could," she wrote.
Related
Before You Go
