Willow Smith opened up to her mother and grandmother on “Red Table Talk” about being comfortable with multiple intimate relationships.
What We Know:
- Artists and musician Willow Smith is embracing a polyamorous lifestyle according to this week’s discussion on “Red Table Talk,” a popular Facebook Watch talk show hosted by her mom Jada Pinkett Smith accompanied by grandmother Adrienne Banfield-Norris. Polyamory is the pursuit of multiple emotional and romantic relationships with the informed consent of all partners involved.
- Willow tells her family that her decision to pursue consensual nonmonogamy is rooted in her distain of marriage and the traditional roles of being a married woman. She noted that “With polyamory, I feel like the main foundation is the freedom to be able to create a relationship style that works for you and not just stepping into monogamy because that’s what everyone around you says is the right thing to do.”
“So I was like, ‘How can I structure the way that I approach relationships with that in mind?'” she continued.
- Gabrielle Smith, a polyamory advocate, appeared as a guest on the talk show to discuss what consensual nonmonogamy means. “It’s not about, ‘Oh, I wanna have all these partners. I wanna do all of these things,'” Gabrielle said. “It’s just like my sexuality. I’m not specifically attracted to men, and I’m not specifically attracted to women or any other gender. It’s that I am open to anything. I want to be able to take opportunities if I feel like they’re natural to me.”
- According to a 2016 study out of Indiana University published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, over 20 percent of U.S. adult surveyed reported having at some point in their lives experienced this nontraditional romantic arrangement despite age, education level, income, religion, region, political affiliation, and race. However, straight men straight, gay men, lesbians, or bisexual people were likelier to have experienced consensual nonmonogamy.
Willow admits that although she believes in polyamory, she didn’t see herself having more than two partners at a time.
