Jaden Smith appeared as the night’s guest of honor at the Variety Power of Young Hollywood Event, an event dedicated to celebrating an emerging lot of stars, along with The Get Down co-stars Ansel Elgort and Elle Fanning, Sophie Turner, Becky G, and Ariel Winter.
Smith appeared at the Variety Power of Young Hollywood Event in a Gucci leather jacket designed with retro-styled flowers, stars, and hearts which he wore over a yellow T-shirt. He paired them with black trousers and sneakers.
At the event he was seen kissing his girlfriend Sarah Snyder, a 21-year-old model, thus putting to rest all the rumors that had arisen recently when a post appeared showing Snyder in bed with a photographer named Gunner Stahl. Smith had been tagged on that post, to which he is yet to respond.
Also, Snyder had posted on Instagram with a somewhat ambiguous caption that seemed to suggest that she was over Smith. However, that post was soon replaced with two pouting emojis.
Smith appeared in the event alongside Snyder who was dressed casually in an In-N-Out Burger T-Shirt and torn jeans, and the couple engaged in mild PDA.
This comes in the wake of rumors that had circulated of Jaden Smith having committed suicide, after a video emerged soon after his 18th birthday showing him to be crying and saying goodbye to his dad.
It is now speculated by some analysts that it may have been a publicity stunt to promote The Get Down, the costliest show on Netflix directed by Baz Luhrmann. It traces the origins of hip-hop in the Bronx in the 70s, and Smith plays the role of Dizzee, a close pal of the protagonist.
In the sixth episode of the first season, it is Dizzee’s kiss with a guy on a dance floor at a gay club where a drag queen performs to a retrofitted Christina Aguilera track that is creating ripples.
Not only has Smith’s sexuality come under the radar, but this scene also makes us remember his father in Six Degrees of Separation, where he played a queer man, a role that went on to become career-defining for him.
The film was released in 1993 when Will Smith was 25, and though it showed him seducing a character played by Anthony Michael Hall, there are no actual intimate physical interactions between the two shown on screen.
This was supposed because Smith had been advised by Denzel Washington to avoid locking lips with a man on screen in order not to jeopardize his career as a leading man in Hollywood. With Smith’s queerness and his recent onscreen exploits, things seem to have come full circle for the senior Smith.
Smith had recently ruffled many conservative feathers by appearing in dresses which he calls ‘clothes,’ not ‘girls clothes’ (yes, he is adorable), something which landed him a modelling deal with Louis Vuitton, in whose ads he was featured wearing a skirt.
However, the extent to which his kissing another man hails the progress made by the LGBT movement in screen representation remains to be seen, with the show still not over, and most importantly with the inclusion of a woman’s breast, which suddenly flashes in between the moments the men lock their lips.
This bizarre cut has perplexed and frustrated many gay fans, something evident from a point made in Out magazine, according to which the show, in spite of all its embracing of sexuality, seems to exclude gayness from its purview.
Talking about his fashion choices to Variety, Jaden Smith, who is quite the fashionista, said that this sudden attention to his manner of dressing was ridiculous since he had been wearing dresses for the last ten years at least.
He cites a mixture of real and imaginary characters as his fashion inspirations, like The Joker, Poseidon, and Andy Warhol among others.