Alicia Silverstone clears the air about why her son cut his hair: 'It had nothing to do with bullying at all'
Alicia Silverstone won Instagram in November when she posted video of her nine-year-old son, Bear, trimming his long locks on camera. "Yes, It's true. Bear cut his hair!!" Silverstone wrote in the caption. “Was it his decision? Yes. Did I cry inside as I watched him get it cut? Maybe … but did I try to stop him? Not for one second.”
So one month after Bear’s close shave, how is he liking life with short hair? “He likes it,” Silverstone tells Yahoo Entertainment during a conversation about her new comedy Sister of the Groom. “I mean, he seems to like it! He has mentioned to a few people, ‘I think I made a big mistake,’ but then he's also says he likes it. I, on the other hand, am like ‘Where’s my baby?’ But I keep it to myself.” (Watch our video interview above.)
Silverstone is a hands-on mother in many ways, but when it comes to her son’s grooming choices, she’s happily hands-off. “It’s his little body, and he’s nine,” she says, beaming with pride. “What’s so beautiful about it is watching him grow and try something. And that’s all it is — he’s trying something. He wanted to see what it feels like to have short hair, and now he does and it’s great.”
The actress also set the record straight about why Bear chose to cut his hair in the first place. Initially, reports circulated that he made the choice after being bullied at school, but Silverstone makes it clear that was an unrelated incident. “One reporter totally made a false assessment of the situation. I had posted a story maybe a few months ago where I was talking about how proud I was of Bear, because he had had one day in his life where these kids were calling him a girl, and saying he wasn’t a boy. I was so impressed, because the next day we happened to have our hair appointment on the books, and when he walked in, the guy said, ‘What do you want do to do with your hair?’
“Bear said, ‘I want to grow it as long as I can,’” Silverstone continues. “‘I want to get it down to my waist.’ So the story I posted on my Instagram was about how proud I was that in the face of being made fun of this one time, he was like, ‘Screw you, my hair is amazing!’ I thought was pretty incredible, and I was proud of the little boy that he was. Then I also posted recently that he cut his hair, and someone decided that he cut it because of that incident. But that incident was like two-and-a-half years ago, and it's completely incorrect. So there you have it!”
Besides haircuts, Silverstone also regularly shares her movies with her son. While he hasn’t yet seen her kick butt as Batgirl in Batman & Robin, he has seen her era-defining high school classic, Clueless... and took away some interesting lessons from the experience. “They had a screening at the Hollywood Cemetery, and I was asked to introduce the film,” she remembers. “It seemed like a very special moment for him to be there. I would not have shown him the movie at five, because it’s not appropriate for a five-year-old, but I don’t think it harmed him in any way. All he did was come away trying to French kiss me! Don’t worry, I kept my mouth closed.”
To this day, Silverstone says that Bear still remembers Clueless as that movie with all the kissing. “He asked me the other day, ‘Mommy why do people kiss with their mouths open with their boyfriend and girlfriend?’ I said, ‘How do you know that?’ And he said, ‘I see it on the street, and in Clueless!’ That’s the one thing he took away from it.”
It’ll probably be a little while before Bear watches Sister of the Groom, which premieres in theaters, on digital and on demand on Dec. 18. The comedy casts Silverstone as Audrey, whose mid-life crisis accelerates when she attends her brother’s ritzy wedding. During the course of the festivities, Audrey causes all manner of havoc, up to and including giving her soon-to-be sister-in-law drugs. “I mean, she doesn’t know she’s slipping them to her, but it’s still not good,” she says laughing. “I’m pretty much a sucker for a wedding, but this is a wedding that goes really wrong.”
Starring in Sister of the Groom also hasn’t had Silverstone dreaming of her son’s wedding just yet. “He's just a baby,” she says. “I hope he meets the most magical woman in the world. He will one day, because he's so he's so sweet and lovely. It'll be so interesting to see the man he turns into, but we are not there. He's a baby!”
Sister of the Groom premieres in theaters, on digital and on demand on Friday, Dec. 18.
— Video produced by Jen Kucsak and edited by Jimmie Rhee
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