The Smiths are disgusted. Jada Pinkett and Jaden Smith slammed Shane Dawson for sexualizing Willow. The social media personality came under fire over the weekend after YouTube clip resurfaced of him pretending to masturbate to a poster of Willow when she was 11 years old. (Dawson was 23 at the time of the video.)
After the clip went viral, Jada and Jaden took to Twitter on Saturday, June 27, to slam the YouTuber for sexualizing the youngest member fo the Smith family. Their tweets came after Dawson took to his YouTube channel a day earlier on Friday, June 26, to apologize for his past offensive behavior in a 20-minute video titled “Taking Accountability.”
“To Shane Dawson … I’m done with the excuses,” Jada tweeted.
Jaden wrote, “SHANE DAWSON I AM DISGUSTED BY YOU. YOU SEXUALIZING AN 11 YEAR OLD GIRL WHO HAPPENS TO BE MY SISTER!!!!!! IS THE FURTHEST THING FROM FUNNY AND NOT OKAY IN THE SLIGHTEST BIT.”
The rapper also tweeted, “This Man Was Also Doing Black Face On The Regular. As The Youth We Need To Support Creators Who Support Us And Our Morals. This Is Not Okay.”
In Dawson’s apology video, which has been criticized by Twitter users and the Smith family for attempting to excuse his racist actions, the YouTuber apologized for his past racist content, which included dressing in blackface and using the N-word.
“Blackface was something that I did a lot. Like, I did it a lot on my channel. There’s no excuse for it, there’s literally no excuse,” he said. “I made a video six years ago talking about it and I gave excuses. I knew it was wrong, I knew I never wanted to do it again, but I didn’t do the work. I didn’t actually look into the history of it and why it’s so wrong, and why people were so upset.”
Though he didn’t mention Willow specifically, the social media personality also apologized for sexual and “inappropriate” comments he made about children. “I swear on my life, I am not somebody who would ever talk about a child, like in seriousness, I would never talk about a child in any way that is inappropriate,” Dawson said. “That is disgusting, that is gross, it is not something I would ever do.It is something I did for shock value or because I thought it was funny or, like ‘Oh my god, my child molester character,’ or whatever.”