Ruby Rose highlights lasting impact of Jaden Smith gender fluid advert
'It's going to let people know they’re different in a way that should be celebrated'
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Your support makes all the difference.Jaden’s Smith’s gender fluid appearance in a Louis Vuitton advert has been heralded for making a “huge impact” on the movement, as the video for the campaign finally landed online.
Jaden, 17, appears alongside three female models in the advert shot by esteemed fashion photographer Bruce Webber, entitled ‘The Heroine’, for the brand’s Spring 2016 collection.
The androgynous actor and son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith has promoted the gender fluid movement before by sharing images of himself in a dress and skirt on social media. However, this is the first time he has appeared in a major fashion campaign wearing clothes stereotypically considered female, leading some to champion him as a non-binary icon for subverting gender stereotypes.
Ruby Rose, who identifies as gender fluid, focused on the wider and lasting social impact the advert could have by opening a dialogue about gender fluidity in her own response.
“For me, I’m more in awe of the fact that I know what this means in a larger perspective," she told The Cut. "[Kids] from middle America, to smaller towns in Australia, to all over the world — if they don’t quite understand why they don’t quite feel comfortable in a dress, but all their friends wear dresses, or if they’re a boy and they want to wear a dress or they want to wear a skirt, they’re gonna get picked on. To be able to make this huge impact on what was really a huge transgender and gender-fluidity movement last year is really going to be for the greater good of society because it’s going to let people know they’re not different in a weird way; they’re different in a way that should be celebrated."
Rose also defended Jennifer Lawrence over comments she made about dressing like a “slutty power lesbian” during an interview with Glamour magazine.
Her remark drew criticism for appropriating a sexuality, but Rose insists the Joy actress is an important advocate for female empowerment.
“I know that she has an amazing sense of humour, and for her to say that, I know that would never come from a bad place,” she said. "She’s always spending so much of her time supporting other women and the LGBT community. There’s no way that she meant that with any kind of malice.”
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