Toughen yourself, we’re told, whoever we are, whatever we’ve been through or are going through.
I think a lot about how we are constantly asked to make our skin ever thicker. It is a rejection of the expectation that we laugh off everything people want to say and do to us. It is a repudiation of the incessant valorizing of taking a joke, having a sense of humor. It is a defense of boundaries and being human and enforcing one’s limits.
This is not a defense of Will Smith, who does not need me to defend him.