Willow Smith Opens Up About 'Radical' Move to Shave Her Hair: 'I Like to See a Glare on My Scalp'

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Willow Smith is looking back at her past hair transformation.

In an interview with Glamour UK published on Thursday, the two-time Emmy Award nominee reflected on her decision to initially shave her head two years after her 2010 debut single "Whip My Hair" was released.

Discussing the choice made when she was 11 years old, Smith, 21, told the outlet, "I like to see a glare on my scalp, a bounce of light."

"Shaving my head is maybe the most radical thing I've done in the name of beauty," she added.

Jerritt Clark/Getty Images Willow Smith

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Smith noted in the conversation with the magazine that "as a Black woman, there were a lot of layers to my relationship with my hair and skin growing up," which has served as "a learning curve" for her.

"However I'm feeling, I like to do that. I don't really like to think about it too much," she said of her preference in styling. "I love to be free with it. I think just being me sometimes is radical."

"I had to look up to other beautiful Black women," she explained." Just looking at someone who's like me, living their truth and doesn't let what society says tear them down. I think that was the most important [influence] for me as a child."

Last July, Smith shaved her head onstage during a pop-punk performance of her single "Whip My Hair." It served as a climactic conclusion to her Facebook Live event Willow in Concert: Lately I Feel Everything, promoting the release of her fourth studio album.

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She previously had her head shaved in March 2020, while she spent 24 hours in a glass room as part of a performance art installation at the Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.

"I feel like I was just shedding a lot of history and emotional baggage," Smith later explained on an episode of Red Table Talk. "Six, seven, years of emotion, I just let it go."

After shaving her head for the first time in 2012, Smith told PEOPLE in June 2019 that "it was the perfect way to rebel."

"I was super young, and I had a dream, but all I really wanted to do was sing, and I didn't equate that with all the business and the stress that ended up coming with it," Smith added of her sudden fame at a young age. "I was just like, 'Whoa, this is not the life that I want.'"

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Last year, the I Am Legend actress also convinced her mom Jada Pinkett Smith that bald is beautiful. The proud mom unveiled her shaved head last July, sharing a photo of her new look as she snuggled up to her daughter. "Willow made me do it because it was time to let go BUT … my 50's are bout to be Divinely lit with this shed," Jada, 50, wrote in the caption at the time.

"A gift is pure when it is given from the heart to the right person at the right time and at the right place, and when we expect nothing in return," Willow added on Instagram.