Jojo Siwa: The Internet’s Court Jester

Well, actually, can I start by saying, have you listened to the Betty Davis-Is cover that was put on Spotify?

I sure have.

I like it's not that bad.

It's not that bad.

I think it's like, especially in the beginning, I actually think it's kind of good.

And then it gets into more auto-tune and it gets a little like rough around the edges.

Yeah, there's a lot of pitch correction there, but you know what?

She did what she had to do.

Everyone needs to chill out.

Hello, hello, and welcome to A Bit Fruity, the show where sometimes we talk about fascism and other times we talk about

JoJo Siwa.

JoJo Siwa calls her boyfriends balls Jimmy and Timmy.

And the reason...

And the reason I know that is because anytime the former child star who's had her brain and body commodified for mass consumption since she was nine years old does anything.

There's an entire cottage industry of both mainstream tabloid news outlets and content creators devoted to making sure that as many people as possible have as strong of feelings as possible about it.

So today,

I'm going to give you mine.

Jojo Siwa is a 22-year-old who has been a lot of things.

A bubbly reality TV child star, a 13-year-old merchandising mogul, a 16-year-old selling out arenas built for pop stars, the reason kids' parents tuned into Nickelodeon, and the reason kids' parents boycotted Nickelodeon, a lesbian icon, a renounced former lesbian icon, but more than anything, she has made a lot of people, a lot of money.

Today, I want to talk about JoJo Siwa, both the person and the person-shaped site upon which millions of people have for now more than a decade projected their cultural anxieties about girlhood, gender, sexuality, and growing up.

And if I do this episode justice, I hope that we can all walk away feeling good about bringing the temperature down on the discourse around JoJo Siwa.

To help me do that is, of course, one of my best friends, Kat Tenbarge.

Welcome back to the podcast.

Thank you for having me again.

I'm so excited to talk about this topic.

I feel like you and I are at our best when we're talking about influencers with complex public images.

100%.

This is like our special interest.

Before we get into today's episode, if you would like to support the show, if you would like more of the show, you can find that over on Patreon.

That will be linked in the episode description on Spotify, YouTube, wherever you're listening to this.

I have some bonus episodes over there.

I'm about to put up a new one that I just recorded with the feminist Twitch streamer Caroline Kwan about the cold play couple surveillance state and about the internet's obsession with prying into what should be innocuous funny videos and turning them into true crime panopticons.

But for now, Kat, how do you feel going into this episode about JoJo Siwa considering the conversation constantly swirling around her for the last like 13 years?

It's very surreal because it's like Jojo has been so oversaturated in online and traditional media for like a decade at this point.

And it is very surreal to have that image of a very young girl turn into this image of like what she's currently being portrayed of, which she's in like her classic like post-Disney channel messy era.

And it makes me just feel a little bit sick watching how it plays out today because I'm just like, we're repeating that history of what we've seen with people who previously had that position, people like Miley Cyrus.

Someone who she will often compare herself to.

Yes.

Shall we jump in with a little early life?

You know we love chronology on the A Bit Fruity podcast.

So Jojo Joel Siwa is born in 2003 in Omaha, Nebraska.

She grows up there competitive dancing.

Her mom, Jessa Lynn, who you definitely know more about than I do, because I texted you about doing this episode and you were like, I'm dying to talk about Jessa Lynn Siwa.

And I was like, is that jojo's full name

but so she grows up with you know her mom who owns a dance studio her dad's a chiropractor i threw in a picture of them into this outline that uh i shared with you and one thing that's really interesting to me about jojo sewa's family is that they all look the same

like and i don't even mean that in like obviously like kids look like their parents but it's like her dad looks like her mom the kids look everyone looks the same yeah which is just like it's very it's giving very much like white Nebraska family.

Yes, that's what I was going to say.

Is like, I've never been to Nebraska, but from growing up in like a similar suburban flyover state, it's like this is the archetypal family.

Mom owning a dance studio, like daughter in competitive dance.

Like, I know this story very, very well.

I love the idea that Ethel Kane's A House in Nebraska is about JoJo Siwa.

Jojo Siwa does still call home that house in Nebraska.

Jojo begins performing at two years old, and she says her mom recognized her talent really early on and enrolled her in dance.

Among the period where Jojo was growing up, this was such a like upper middle class status symbol to have a young child enrolled in dancing, a young girl specifically, enrolled in dancing from like a very young age.

This is like a status symbol of that type of upper middle class wealth.

And it doesn't really matter if the child has innate talent or not.

It's more about how much money you can pour into this.

Because it's like, I grew up in this environment.

I went to one of these types of dance studios from a young age.

And it's like, it really is not like, oh, JoJo's mother like recognized this talent in her from two years old.

I don't believe that's the case.

I think it's like you see these women grow up and their talent.

is molded by the fact that they have thousands of dollars poured into like their dance training and they get specialized attention and they you get more roles, you get more opportunities like the more your parents pay.

I'm so fascinated by these insights you seem to have about everything.

That's the well-rounded Cincinnati upbringing

that it gets you.

So this childhood of dance ultimately results in Jojo Siwa getting cast in one of Abby Lee Miller's spin-off shows.

So it wasn't dance moms, it was like a smaller production.

She was nine years old when this happens, and she does well in that competition.

Notably, when it comes to reality TV, she showed a lot of personality.

She's loud, she's sassy.

And when she's 11, the Abby Lee Miller dance producers call her in to join the cast of Dance Moms, where she just continues to get renewed because she's such a star.

Now, I was not much of a Dance Moms person growing up.

I think as a kid, I turned on one episode and I was like, whoa, this is none of my business.

I watched dance moms whenever I was allowed to, which my parents hated it.

I technically was not allowed to watch dance moms.

I mean, it was televised child abuse.

Yes.

And I think that my parents probably just thought it was like trashy TV, which it is.

But it's also like...

The way that I watched it as a young girl, it was aspirational to me.

Because again, it's like, it's a status symbol.

If you are in this type of position, it's not necessarily that you were blessed with this talent.

It's just that you are, you have really rich parents.

And so it's aspirational to see like that kind of experience as like a young dancer.

And it really capitalized on that culture in Ohio, in Pennsylvania, in the Midwest, like in these spaces.

So JoJo Siwa was on dance moms for two years.

And some of the footage from, I mean, dance moms in general is just fucking crazy.

We're going to play a clip in a second.

But one thing that is really interesting to me about her is I was watching actually Jojo Siwa's interview on Call Her Daddy.

It's interesting the way she tells it.

She always had an innate sense for how to attain the spotlight.

She talks about how, because, okay, this is, this is something I do remember from Dance Moms.

If you were not a Dance Moms watcher, I'll try to explain it.

But basically, the way that they ranked the girls, I think every week, every episode, was through the pyramid, the dance pyramid.

And if you were the best, you got put at the top of the pyramid.

And there was always drama and like scuffling between the girls and their moms, notably, about where the girls were placed.

Jojo described in that interview how her mom, Jessa Lynn, would be like furious even after the camera stopped rolling when they went to the car if she was put at the bottom of the pyramid.

And Jojo, age 11, would be like, but if I get put at the bottom, I'm getting more airtime.

I'm getting a

longer storyline within the episode.

And she was like, it's not really about the pat on the back of getting put at the top of the pyramid.

It's about having her face on the screen of dance moms.

And that is such a crazy insight for a child to have.

It's also like yesterday, you had sent me a compilation of clips from dance moms that were intended to portray this tiny young girl in a negative light, which it's not surprising because that's literally what the show was.

But nonetheless, watching those clips, one of the things that stood out to me is like the back and forth between JoJo and Jessalyn that is just like the calculated nature of it.

So for example, Jojo was really upset after a classic hallmark of dance moms is Abby Lee Miller's screaming at these children, emotionally abusing these children.

And Jojo looks like she's about to cry.

And Jessolyn is like, in a very like sing-songy, optimistic tone, she's like, are you going to let her like make you cry?

Are you going to let her get you to cry like that?

And it's like, to me, that is just such a surreal way of parenting your young child to be doing this on TV to be like coaching them not to be a good dancer but coaching them to like present their emotions on screen in a certain way totally I mean I think I think anyone who watched dance moms knows that like the Abby Lee Miller enterprise was

kind of devilish

I don't know what kind of parent you have to be to put your child in that situation for profit.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I feel like this genre, like dance moms, it is one step above toddlers and tiaras.

It is the exact same culture that you see with the pageants, but it's like given this slight air of sophistication, or like it's slightly less exploitative because it's an art form because they're dancing.

But in reality, like the behavior and the mentality that is on display is exactly the same as pageantry.

So Jojo kind of garners this reputation on the show, again, as an 11 to 13-year-old, which is how old she was when she was was on it, for being like loud and sassy.

And she would be reprimanded for this often.

I was watching old clips of JoJo Siwa on dance moms and it almost sent like shockwaves through my body because the way that she was reprimanded for the way that she was behaving resonated so much to me as like something that was familiar as someone who grew up like a little gay boy.

Of like, you're doing too much, like slap on the wrist, like you're being too, too much, too much, too much.

And I think people trying to figuratively and then literally straighten Jojo Siwa out has been

a through line of her entire public-facing career.

But there were these compilations, you know, all over YouTube of like JoJo's rudest dance moms moments.

It was always like, look at this spoiled little brat.

And I was watching it last night and I was like, this is just a small child being abused on TV.

I just want to play like one clip from that.

She deserves nothing.

Don't have an attitude that you are entitled in this world.

You are not.

You deserve nothing else.

You earn it.

You can't stand here and cry.

I want no, no, no, no, no, no, no crying children.

None.

Well, if you yell at me, I'm gonna cry.

Get out.

Go.

Get out.

Go.

Go.

She goes, well, if you yell at me, I'm gonna cry.

And that was framed as like, this little bitch.

Yeah.

So crazy.

It is really crazy.

And it's like the message that is being like rammed in over and over and over and over again.

Like what people are repeatedly telling JoJo Siwa is you must behave over the top to be rewarded, to get attention, to succeed.

But at the same time, you will be punished for it.

Like what people want to see from you is they want to see you be humiliated.

And so you must learn how to get that specific type of attention.

And I think that is also a through line in how she has presented herself in adulthood as well.

Something that is really interesting in the conversations that swirl around JoJo Siwa is how she reflects on dance moms now and her relationship to Abby Lee Miller now, which is a positive one, she says.

She talks about dance moms as being an overall positive experience, but also she'll say things like, you know, what Abby was doing was tough love.

She said, in the Call Her Daddy interview, you know, well, that's just part of being an athlete.

You know, it just happened to be put on TV for everyone to see and scrutinize.

And she also said to James Charles, when James Charles did a makeover on her a few years ago, she was like, you always have a choice in life.

I don't want to remember the bad.

I just try to remember the fun memories.

And, you know, I'm not someone to tell JoJo Siwa how to react to like, you know, something traumatizing that happened in her childhood.

But I think it's just important to note that like this was.

abusive.

Yes.

And it's interesting that she compares it to other types of like athleticism and sports culture, because you see the exact same thing in any of these like high achieving extracurricular programs.

I remember when Netflix's cheer came out several years ago, there was this big discussion of like this coach is presented as a core support structure in these dancers' lives, these cheerleaders' lives.

But also people were like, this coach is abusive.

And there was a big conversation where people were like, she's not abusive.

Like tough love is so crucial for kids, especially vulnerable kids from like gay backgrounds, like things, literally things like that.

And it's like, I think that is such a persistent, but a harmful message.

And it's not true.

Like we see the outcomes of these relationships that are abusive between coaches and teachers and students.

And it does not have better outcomes than if they were not abusive.

Totally.

I mean,

I'm heavily invested in the gymnastics world.

And that reminds me of like when Michaela Skinner, who is this like now like MAGA Trump Republican Riley Gaines-loving like anti-Simone Biles former gymnast from Simone Biles Olympic team maybe two Olympic cycles ago she she had this very controversial interview where she was like well the gymnasts were just better when we had the Carolis who were of course the abusive Russian coaches who allowed you know Larry Nassar to fester as this like pedophile doctor but that's also just not true the gymnasts weren't better then the gymnasts there's like safe sport in place now and all of these rules and regulations that are there to prevent what happened with the USA gymnastics scandal from happening again.

And they just won gold in the most recent Paris Olympics.

It's just not true.

Yeah, it's not true.

And it's like, it's part of the justification to enable and defend abusive behavior.

And it's often internalized by victims of abusive behavior.

It's like, if you don't get justice, a lot of times people will just choose to rationalize what happened to them instead.

Totally.

So the licensing of Jojo Siwa's name and likeness happens very, very quickly.

She debuts the bows

as a 12-year-old.

And if you don't know what I'm talking about, if you're watching this on YouTube, I will throw a picture up on the screen.

But on Dance Moms, Jojo Siwa was known for these huge bows in her hair, almost like early Madonna-esque bows.

For

the boomer, gay men who listen to this podcast, shout out to you.

She begins selling these bows, and they become so popular, especially in the United Kingdom, that schools across the UK started to ban them for being a distraction.

Yes.

There was literally like a bullying subculture in the UK where girls, because they're obviously expensive bows.

They're like branded bows with a celebrity face on them.

And it's like, if your family couldn't afford to get you JoJo's bows, there would be like a whole bullying thing that broke out, which is insane.

Do you know how many bows have been sold to date?

I don't.

I didn't put it in the outline because I didn't want you to see.

How many bows?

Take one guess.

200 million bows.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Nope.

Wow, JoJo C was nothing to you.

90 million.

90 million bows.

That's an insane number of bows.

Visualize 90 million bows in a room.

Kat's like, I could have sold more bows.

I could have gotten the 100 million.

Well, if they hadn't been banned in the schools, then she could have easily cleared 200 million bows.

So she's selling millions and millions and millions of products, you know, replicating her likeness as a 12-year-old.

And also in 2016, when she's 12, 13-ish, she releases her, I believe it was her debut song, Boomerang, the music video for which has currently on YouTube over a billion views.

Have you seen this?

I have seen this.

So Boomerang is a song about, it's like dealing with haters and cyber bullies.

I was watching this boomerang song where she's just like dancing around, you know, this choreographed school set being like, you know, basically like, fuck the haters, which like at this point, she's a very famous child star.

She has many.

But what's so interesting to me is like she can't even process like mass online harassment like a normal child.

I mean, normal children don't even deal with that level of harassment as children, but like she can't even process that without it being commodified and turned into this.

billion view music video.

It just really, and this is a through line through everything we're going to talk about with her, but she really has been living her entire life inside of a Truman show.

Jojo came up in an era that was rough because not only was she experiencing this like stratospheric mainstream traditional fame through reality TV, through Nickelodeon child stardom, she's also experiencing internet stardom at the exact same time.

And so it's like, I think, and she has often been compared to, and has compared herself to Miley Cyrus.

I think that is a pretty apt comparison, especially when you look at the amount of commodification of her young image.

But it's also like, At the time when these early Disney channel stars were becoming the faces of teen celebrity, social media was not yet what it was at the time when Jojo was coming up as a major celebrity.

So the way that I found out about Boomerang and really found out about Jojo was through this lens of older content creators and adults who were adults who were like mocking her and memeing her.

And it's very similar to what happened to like Rebecca Black with Friday.

It's similar.

It reminds me of how people treated Justin Bieber when he was like a young boy.

It is this like mockery.

And also I recall vividly like older YouTubers because she's becoming a massive YouTube star simultaneously.

And I remember older YouTubers like trying to like figure her out through this lens of like they're almost dehumanizing her.

They're like people are turning her into an object and something to be critiqued on and not making space for the fact that she was a real child and a real person.

And look, I know if you tuned into this episode, you're probably waiting for the part where we talk about some of the less savory things that Jojo Siwa has said, the more questionable things that she's said and done.

And we're going to get to those.

But I wanted to contextualize it like meaningfully in all of this other stuff stuff that she's had to grown up inside of.

Because, you know, I feel like when we or someone we know behave in a certain way, like we understand that the way we behave is a product of all of our life experiences that shaped us into the person we are today.

And when we talk about people we don't know, and in this case, public figures, I feel like oftentimes, especially with like online commentary coverage,

all of that behavior, you know, for example, like Jojo Siwa, like drinking vodka on stage while like humping the air or something, is viewed in a vacuum.

And this is so often the case.

And it's the case with a lot of people we talk about on this podcast.

And it's the case with, like, I don't know, like Demi Lovato, too.

Like, anytime anyone who is an adult now who had like a super traumatizing, often like really public childhood does something like cringe or questionable or whatever, they're just judged in the worst way.

But I'm like, can we talk about the time that that like person almost died?

You know,

shit like that.

Yes, 100%.

And it's like even the most empathetic kind of portrayals of jojo at this age were still kind of like look at how ridiculous her life is and her life was objectively very ridiculous like i remember watching a video where the creator went to Jojo Siwa's house and it was like let's like walk through her house and marvel at how absurd it is that this child's entire lived environment her home is branded And people might remember this because these videos would get tens of millions of views.

The inside of Jojo Siwa's family home, where she actually lived, was like full of Jojo Siwa branded merchandise.

The car was covered in her face.

In the house, there was a merch closet where they had hundreds of different types of merchandise items that all had her face on them.

Her bedroom had like a slide, but also it was stuffed with like all of her merchandise and all of her bows everywhere.

Even her dog, even her dog was like part of of the merchandise and the TV show and the character of JoJo Siwa.

And it's like, I can't even fathom what that would do to someone to grow up like that.

Yeah.

And we're going to talk more about the house and more about the family and the financials of it all in a moment.

But I want to keep going with our timeline.

So Jojo's on Dance Moms for two years.

She starts with this budding branding empire with the help of her momager and I'm sure a lot of other adults around her.

In 2017, as a 13-year-old, she is signed by Nickelodeon.

And all of this stuff just explodes a thousand-fold.

So the merchandising empire is expanded through JCPenney.

It includes bedding, dolls, books, anything you can imagine.

And this shit sells.

One thing that is really interesting to me, just as an aside, is that a lot of people, especially now who talk about Jojo Siwa, because I was watching a lot of people's videos and podcasts about Jojo Siwa when I was getting ready to make this one.

People will be like, who are JoJo Siwa's fans?

Young girls.

And I don't even mean just young girls 10 years ago.

I have a niece who is nine years old.

And I was asking my sister-in-law, I was like, who are like the big icons?

Who are like the pop culture icons for like a really, really young child girl now?

She was like Olivia Rodrigo, JoJo Siwa.

Jojo Siwa has had fans, millions and millions and millions of fans.

Like people aren't sailing out her arena tours ironically.

Like she has so many bands.

But anyway.

Yeah.

Well, it's like that makes a lot of sense to me because there's this book I read earlier this year called Disney High.

And it's a book about like the business behind Disney Channel.

I am sure that you read that book, Kat.

No, you'll never believe this book that I was reading.

But so it was about like specifically how Disney Channel became this like empire of child stardom and merchandising and music and movies and TV and celebrity.

And that was the early aughts when these major corporations controlled the airwaves.

They had much more of a gatekeeper role into what children were doing with their spare time and what children's entertainment was.

The moment in which Jojo Siwa exploded was this massive like fracturing where the traditional entertainment gatekeepers no longer could control social media, which became the main platform by which youth culture was formed.

And so Jojo Siwa was able to straddle like both worlds at the same time, which I think made her into kind of almost like an incomparable figure within this generation.

Yes.

And she dominates both.

Wow, you segued me perfectly.

She dominates both the traditional airwaves.

She gets put all over Nickelodeon programming.

And she starts really, really hustling at YouTube.

And she grows her YouTube channel to 12 million subscribers while notably doing everything herself.

She was doing the creative, the filming, the editing, the posting, etc., all by herself.

There was a period of years where she was posting to YouTube 10 times a week.

Wow.

So I'm sorry to the bit fruity listeners who think that I'm not working as hard as Jojo Siwa.

I'm trying my best.

It's like, when did she go to school?

Well,

actually, was she homeschooled?

I don't even know.

I'm sure she was.

Almost certainly, almost certainly homeschooled.

It's so interesting.

I was reading everything about Jojo C1, School Never Comes Up.

So I'm sure it was a homeschool situation.

She says of this time, quote, once I hit 13 years old, it was wake up, film, edit, upload, sing, dance, record, post, sleep.

And it's like one of the, sorry.

Were you going to say something?

No, I actually, I read that quote and I had to process it for a second because it's, I mean, honestly, that sounds a lot like my life now, but I'm 26.

She was doing this at the same age.

Like, what were you doing when you were 13?

I was doing BuzzFeed MI Gay quiz.

Right, right.

I was like reading, I was reading books.

Something I don't like, I like, I genuinely, I don't even say it to make fun of them.

I think that it is like so tragic that so many former child stars straight up did not receive an education.

Because it's like, you look at like Miley Cyrus has talked about this.

Miley Cyrus's daily schedule was like that because Disney took unprecedented intrusion into her life and they did not get the opportunity to be educated.

And I think that is so sad.

And it's like, I think that does play a role in how they acted later.

And it also is, it's sad because it's like, of course.

I think some of these child stars, when they're adults, they struggle with tasks that other people do not because they did not have the foundation into adulthood that most people do.

And it is truly tragic to be sitting here on this like mountain of money, more money than you could ever know what to do with, but not have the education to like necessarily live a life that is fulfilling for you.

I think that's so sad.

I would like to take a quick break from the show to thank the sponsor of today's episode, Factor.

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Don't want anyone to steal my backpack, but like a shut your eyes for 10 minutes without falling asleep kind of nap.

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And now let's get back to it.

In 2019, Jojo Siwa, then aged 15, 16, embarks on the Dream Tour, which is an arena tour of, guess how many shows?

100?

148.

Wow.

A 148 show arena tour.

And at this point, I would like to bring back up her family family and kind of the financial situation as Jojo is still a child.

So her entire family, her mom, her dad, and her brother have moved to LA at this point into a mansion that, of course, Jojo's money bought for them.

And I say Jojo's money bought for them because it isn't legally Jojo's money yet.

You don't technically have access to all of that money.

until you're 18.

Do you know a little bit about the laws that are in place for like child earners like that?

I do because before the Coogan laws existed, it was possible for a child actor's legal guardian or parent to just take all of their money and spend all of it before they even turn 18.

And that unfortunately happened and created this precedent.

And the passage of this legislation required that particularly within these traditional entertainment environments, children's parents would have to put aside a percentage, like 15%

of the money that they made into a trust that couldn't be touched until that child turned 18.

Oh, interesting.

It did.

Wow, this is so interesting.

I just Googled it and learned that the Coogan Law protections have been extended to minors featured in social media content effective January 1st, 2025.

So, as of this year, as of January of this year, the Coogan laws, which only reserve 15% of the money earned to the child, which is not very much percentage-wise, but as of this year, they apply to children on social media.

So needless to say, this was all happening way before that.

And even though the Coogan laws applied to her Nickelodeon work, they were not applying to her, you know, YouTube success, for example.

Yes.

And there are so many cases of YouTube family channels and YouTube like child-focused channels where...

children have since come out because we're past a generation there's already been a generation of child youtube stars the first generation had no protections it was the wild wild wild west even compared to the notoriously exploitative, like traditional children's stardom industry.

Right, right.

So one thing that Jojo mentioned in this Call Her Daddy interview that I honestly found so upsetting was that her mom would express fear to her when she was a child that JoJo would cut them off financially once she turned 18.

And when Jojo was talking about the way that her mom would talk to her as a child, she'd say like, Jojo, if you saw someone on the street who needed your help, you would do anything to help them, right?

And Jojo was like, yeah, of course, I would, you know, I would try to help anyone.

And Jessa Lynn was like, well, if that's what you would do for a stranger, what would you do for people you love?

Yeah, I mean, that's not good.

That's so manipulative.

And Jojo says, like, you know, no one took advantage of me.

And she, she's actually framed it seemingly in her mind.

She said, like, I...

I was so happy that I got to take care of my family that I loved.

And again, I'm not here to tell Jojo Siwa how to feel about any of this,

but I think it's safe to say it's an extremely bizarre dynamic.

Yes.

And she's also admitted in interviews, she said there were times where she would just want her mom to be her mom and not her manager.

She also said that when she was 14, her mom would do, quote, normal things like take my phone away.

And instead of being upset about it, I'd be happy that I could get the day off work.

Wow.

That is so sad.

Isn't that crazy?

That's so sad.

And it's like, I've heard actors, like traditional celebrities, talk about this, and people have varying experiences.

You have like the Jeanette McCurdy end of the spectrum, and then you have people who talk about how, like, the Zendaya side of the spectrum, where it's like her parents more so, at least the perception is that they protected her from sort of like the darker side of this industry.

So it's like there can be a lot of depth and nuance within these varied experiences, but undoubtedly the dynamic of having a child supporting their family that's not like normal that's not natural that's not how the parent-child dynamic is supposed to function the one other thing that i think about a lot from this era of jojo's life is something that she was made fun of for a lot is like in these youtube videos she would talk really fast and really energetically and it was like people would literally like mock this like it was a meme like

jojo's juice yeah yeah that was because okay yeah because i never saw her on dance mom so the first time i was ever exposed to JoJo's you was through her YouTube videos.

And it was like, oh, I'm gonna Jojo Juice.

It was fierce.

It was fierce, but it was, you know, she was very much herself always.

And she was always reprimanded for that.

Yes.

And I also imagine that that sort of presentation is kind of a byproduct of the environment she's in because it's like, if you at age 13, 14, 15 have to wake up every morning and do this pre-recorded segment for your YouTube show.

Of course, you're going to do it like as fast as possible.

Like, you want to get it out of the way.

You want to be done with it.

And also, you have to do so many things that day.

So, it's like this frenetic, like hyper-energetic style of content that she was doing.

People mocked her for it so much.

And that to me is also kind of sad because I'm like, well, no child should be put in this position of having to do this routine daily.

But that was her daily life.

And again, it's like she talks about a lot of the childhood work that she did now as like something that was empowering.

Like, you know, people made fun of me for looking like a child well into my teenage years, but like I was, you know, behind the scenes, like in an office, like working a very adult job, making like more money than any of these people making fun of me would ever see in their lifetimes.

And like, I get all of that.

I get all of that.

But I don't know.

I'm of two minds because I'm always just like, how much can a child consent to labor?

Yes.

And also there's this phenomenon that people talk about a lot where it's like, if you delay your adolescence or like when celebrities become famous, they're like stuck at that age.

And I imagine that there's a lot of pseudoscience that goes into this like belief, but like the facts are she didn't get to have a normal childhood.

And I imagine that that is something that is going to impact her throughout her adulthood is that she was thrust into labor at a very young age.

And I just think that like, I think that's sad.

And I also think that it's like, she's never had a chance to truly relax or take a break from this kind of grind.

And you see that even now, the same as when she was 13 and like

commodifying her own experience with being cyber-bullied by an entire world online into like a music video to get AdSense money from, like, still, you see now, whenever she has these trials and tribulations, they are immediately turned into a product.

So, keeping it moving here, while while she was still at Nickelodeon, at age 17, Jojo Siwa comes out as one of the girls.

She comes out as gay.

I remember it being kind of like a confusing series of posts, but she basically posted this photo with her girlfriend at the time.

And then people were like, Wait, I think this is like her girlfriend.

And then she posted this photo.

I think it said, She was wearing a shirt that I think it said, like best big, gay, gay, big sister ever, or something.

Yes.

I remember at the time, I was like, this is, this is fucking fierce.

Oh, a hundred percent.

I remember this era so vividly.

I remember it so vividly because it's like, I think, especially as like a queer young adult, it's like you feel almost like protective of like queer celebrities who are younger than you in a very parasocial way.

It's not like a real sense of protectiveness that comes from knowing them.

It's just like, I was like, this is so cool.

And I want the best for her.

And I like, I want to see her be supported.

And I just was like, I thought it was thrilling.

When she talks about this now, she said that she woke up and the photo of her and her girlfriend had 90,000 comments.

And she was like, the first 200 were nice.

And I was so excited.

And then the next 89,800 were horrific.

And it, you know, it was all like, she had an entire.

country countries of parents being like, I'm never letting my kids watch Nickelodeon again.

Yeah.

And I remember thinking about this like at the time and how much of a boundary breaking moment this was.

Because I was thinking about it for her in a personal sense and like parasocially, but I was also looking at it almost more so from like a societal sense, where I was like, this is so boundary breaking and transgressive compared to the Disney Channel Nickelodeon stars of the early to mid-aughts.

None of them was allowed to come out as lesbian.

Even I think famously like Raven Simone was like not allowed to come out as a lesbian.

Right.

And so, yeah, it just to me, it was such a huge sign of progress.

And I knew there would be a huge backlash, but I also just thought, like, this is an incredible historic moment for young gay girls who will be able to actually see themselves represented in someone who is like a teenager.

A thousand percent.

And Jojo has had some, you know,

I would say slip-ups when maybe talking about her grandiose, such as when she says she wants to invent a new genre called gaypop,

which people basically lambasted her for, including notably Tegan and Sarah, who were like, we invented gay pop.

Yeah, yeah.

But like people will also swing the pendulum in the other direction and be like, Jojo Siwa has never pioneered anything.

And this is what I mean when I'm like, we cannot look at the silly things that this person says now in a vacuum.

She has had a deeply insane, traumatizing, and yes, at times groundbreaking childhood.

And you mention like other child stars before her who were queer were not allowed to come out.

Jojo Siwa, as far as I can tell, she was not allowed to come out by Nickelodeon.

She did it seemingly without consulting anyone, which again, you shouldn't, obviously goes without saying, you shouldn't have to fucking consult

producers and executives at a TV network to see if you can be your authentic self as a 17-year-old.

But she, again, grew up under circumstances that were not like yours and mine.

And she said that after she came out, the president of Nickelodeon called her and asked her what she was going to tell retail partners like Walmart, Amazon, and Target.

That does not surprise me, but only because I read that book about Disney.

I'm like,

it's so crazy.

No, it is really crazy.

And

I strongly recommend this book.

I wasn't even planning on talking about this book, but in Disney High, the journalist who wrote it interviews people who worked at the Disney Corporation about these contracts that they would have with people like Miley Cyrus and Hillary Duff.

And Miley Cyrus, in particular, was put through the ringer with Disney because Miley Cyrus had a lot of scandals when she was an older teenager and when Hannah Montana was still airing.

And the company, and she wasn't the only one, Vanessa Hudgens,

these women would have their intimate images leaked.

And they were children.

They were girls.

These were like nude images of children that would get leaked.

And the company would make them apologize for taking those photos.

And this is how these corporations treat girls in particular:

you don't know what's going on behind the scenes.

You assume that the company would be like supportive, but in reality, they're like bullying these children at these corporations.

And they're like enforcing these regressive, conservative, in many cases, standards of behavior on them.

It reminds me of when I guess whoever was in charge, like Jive Records, would have 17-year-old Britney Spears do press conferences about how she was waiting till marriage to have sex.

Yes.

It's like,

yes, that is exactly the kind of behavior.

And it's still happening to this day.

And like anyone who has worked in these environments knows there is a corporate culture of just like punishing, particularly women and girls, like girls who are like 15, 16, 17, they are punished for

experiencing what happens to girls.

They're punished for things that are not bad.

They're punished for things that are not their fault.

When other people treat them with misogyny, they are punished for that.

And in the public sphere, they have to apologize publicly and like make it all okay for everybody, even though they're the victim in the situation.

Exactly.

So Jojo continues to like be out and she does things to visually, you know, signify that she's out.

She cuts her hair.

She starts expressing herself differently.

And this is kind of the point at which her relationship with Nickelodeon really sours.

After she comes out, she claims that Nickelodeon really kind of just like stopped including her in their programming, despite the fact that she was like, one of the major faces of their network.

She notably that year, she wasn't invited to the the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, which she heavily implied through like tweets and stuff that she was like, they don't want me there because I'm gay.

I'm controversial now.

Interestingly, and this really stood out to me, Nickelodeon released a statement about this where they're like, we support her, we wish her the best.

We're not aware of the blackballing that she's talking about.

They wrote, We have valued and supported JoJo throughout our incredibly successful partnership, which included a Jojo-themed pride collection at a major national retailer.

And it's just so crazy that like the retort to them abandoning her is yet another like, we sold gay things about her.

We sold her in the gay way too.

It's just everything comes back to like, how have we commodified this person?

Yeah, it's like, how could we have exploited her?

We were exploiting her.

Exactly.

It's like, I'm sorry, it's not funny, but it's, it's, it is, it is crazy.

Yeah.

And that's like, that is truly truly like how you see conservatism and capitalism are so inextricably linked because, in order to be as profitable as possible, you cannot align yourself with movements that are like boundary breaking or make anyone in your target demographic uncomfortable.

So she came out in 2021 as a 17-year-old.

And the years since for JoJo Siwa, I think, have really been marred, as we all know, with like a series of like highly publicized aesthetic choices that have been meant to signal her transition into adulthood.

These have included releasing her song Karma last year, where like she was basically in her typical like Jojo Siwa, like glitter and paint all over the face sort of garb, but it was just black instead of rainbow, which I really did appreciate how she was like, this is me changing.

And it was just like the sparkles are like black sparkles now.

Yes.

Jojo Siwa never changed.

She like drank from a handle of Titos on stage at one of her performances.

And the worst crime that she really committed at this point was just like being cringe.

And people would just pile on.

And if you're listening to this episode, I'm sure you had witnessed even from the outskirts some of those pylons.

And I have to say,

you can feel however you want about the art or music video or song that anyone puts out.

But intellectually speaking, some of these pylons got really dumb.

Like, for example, when she put out Karma, like, Karma's a bitch.

I should have known better.

Hey, I can't sing either, you know?

But

people had revealed that like the song was written by someone else, as many pop songs are.

And then the rights of the song was purchased by JoJo Siwa so she could perform it.

And people were like, so not only does the song suck, but she also stole it from someone else.

And I'm like, that's how music works.

You buy the rights from the songwriter.

Like, it was so dumb.

Famously, the opposite of stealing is when you buy something from someone.

People were like, she copied this lady who wrote the song.

I'm like, no, the lady who wrote the song was paid for it by a one JoJo Siwa.

She wrote it because that's her job.

Her job is to write things for people to buy.

If Jojo didn't buy it, someone else would have, hopefully, so that she could afford rent.

I think that, like, when you see JoJo doing these things on stage, where she's like chugging the handle of vodka or whatever, it's not surprising.

And it goes right back to what I was saying about how, like, she never got a chance to live a real childhood.

She also did not get a chance to live a real adolescence.

Her image, her commodified image, was of a little girl.

And therefore, up until the moment where she like severed those ties with Nickelodeon, she had to project innocence, she had to project girlishness, she had to be marketable in the exact same vein of hitting that target demo of young girls and their parents.

And so she was not allowed to be a normal teenager.

And like, not to keep comparing her to Miley Cyrus, but I think the comparison is so apt because when Miley, who was presented in the exact same way, when she would do things that a normal teenager would do when she got a finger tattoo, when she tried drugs, when she would go to parties,

it became an international global scandal.

And she was punished by everyone for doing it.

And Jojo actually waited until she was an adult to do these things, but she was still punished by everyone for it.

And it's like she's lived her entire life period in the spotlight.

So it's like it comes naturally to her to show this transition in the spotlight and to try to separate her adulthood from her like childlike commodified image.

And it's like, of course, she was punished for doing that.

And of course, she was treated in a way that has these undeniable undeniable contours of misogyny versus like if a male teenage celebrity unfurls like a rocker look.

And we've literally, I've literally watched this happen with TikTokers, like male TikTokers will do things like this.

Not even comparable the level of scrutiny, the level of mockery, the level of attention that it gets.

It's like, it's so, it's, it has a lot to do with the fact that she's a young woman and a young queer woman on top of that.

My camera just heated up, so I'm going to put it in the fridge for a second.

As you know, this is what I do now when

my camera gets too hot and I'm going to run to the bathroom and we'll be right back.

I wanted to take a quick break from this episode to thank Blue Land for sponsoring today's show.

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And now let's get back to it.

What I want to add to when it comes to like people's reaction to Jojo Siwa being Jojo Siwa as of late on the internet, people will be like, oh, like she's obviously like, you know, dressing up like an adult toddler while drinking from a handle of vodka on stage.

Like that, that's a ploy for attention online.

Like she wants our opinions about this to be posted, to be be shared.

And like, is there a validity to that?

Maybe.

No, probably.

Also, I'll say it's a solid probably.

And also,

is getting eyes on the screen the sole way that this person has been taught to value themselves from age nine?

Yes.

And so like, I know

asking people on the internet to be mindful of the way that they approach visuals like this when they see again like adult toddler drinking vodka in front of an arena of people.

When asking people to be mindful and meaningful when it comes to reacting to stuff like that is like trying to push a boulder uphill.

I get it.

But like, what is this podcast for if not being a little bit hopeful about the way that we can treat each other, you know?

And it also is like...

Whenever someone like Miley Cyrus comes out a decade later and is like, my schedule at Nickelodeon was like this.

And this is what, this is how people treated me in the public eye when I was this age.

People are like, people are so awful.

Like,

why do we treat child stars this way?

Like, we should stop doing that.

And then they do the exact same thing every time.

Yep.

Yep.

People are very good.

I was literally just saying this to my boyfriend.

I was like, people are so good at being like, oh, what we did to Brittany.

We should never do that again.

Anyway, Jojo Siwa is a threat to society and she's corrupting.

Like, you know,

it's ridiculous.

But, but it's also like, admittedly, it, when you see that popcrave tweet about Jojo Siwa and it has 10,000 quote tweets and everyone's dunking on it and everyone's having fun.

I understand that as a netizen myself, it can be hard to stop yourself in the moment from piling on.

And that's, I don't know, that's kind of what we have to do though.

Yeah, especially when someone says something that's like not necessarily true.

Like when JoJo is like, oh, I'm inventing gay pop.

It's really hard to like hold your tongue because it's like, well, that's obviously not true.

And I don't think that everyone should like silence themselves from like critiquing JoJo Siwa or anyone's behavior, but rather like consider that for her lived experience as an individual human being, every day, like imagine what her life is like searching her own name.

Imagine like all of this content just becomes this like miasma of like good faith criticism, mostly bad faith criticism, mostly like mocking you, making fun of you, bullying you.

It's like it's hard to see the forest for the trees.

And I think that people also don't really want to take any sort of responsibility or accountability for the very real phenomenon that our individual online behavior has real consequential effect.

Even when that person you're talking about is rich, even when the person who you're talking about is a celebrity.

We're all on the same internet and people want to act like it's not real.

And the things that they say will never reach that person or have any consequence on that person.

When I really think that it actually does.

Jojo Siwa's relationship with her own sexuality has been a huge point of discussion.

And yes, we are getting to it.

This is what you came for, folks.

But she has sort of allowed us to peer into her own struggle with her relationship with lesbian identity, with queer identity.

And something that people will bring up a lot was this like Zoom interview that she did one time where she said that she didn't like the sound of the word lesbian.

And she was like, I don't like the word itself.

It's just like lesbian.

It's just like a lot.

But I mean, at the end of the day, that's what I am.

So it's like, it just is, it's like the word moist.

It's just like, ghuh.

So it wasn't like she's like, I hate lesbians.

It was like,

I don't like the word.

That being said, I think it's fair to understand this and some of the other things that she will do and say about queer identities as just like internalized homophobia.

Yeah.

I think that's fair.

And I also, I find that to be so relatable.

When I was her age, I felt the exact same way about the word lesbian.

And I'm sure I said that to people and had that said to me.

I think a lot of people also forget that, like, when you're growing up gay, whether you are a celebrity or whether you are a girl next door, you will people will say these things to you.

People said to me when I was a teenager that the word lesbian grossed them out.

So it's like where that internalized homophobia comes from is like it is you trying to normalize and rationalize the homophobia that is externalized that you face and it's you trying to come to terms with that and like particularly like i think back to my experience when i was jojo's age and like coming into my sexuality that was like one of the as it is as it is for many queer people that was one of the hardest most confusing times of my life there were a lot of days when i didn't quite know who i was or how to explain it to myself and others and so i have so much empathy for what she's going through I cannot even fathom.

It's like a nightmare to imagine doing all of that in the public eye with this level of scrutiny.

Yeah.

And I'm, look, I'm a gay man.

I'm obviously not a lesbian.

And I'm certainly not here to tell any lesbians online, young lesbians who might look up to or look alongside JoJo Siwa as someone who represents them, which there's very, obviously not enough, very visible.

lesbian representation.

So I also understand why a disproportionate amount gets put on someone like her.

But, you know, know, I really do understand when people say, you know, yes, this is internalized homophobia, but it's kind of on you to work that out before you're on camera.

And I agree with that.

And then I also think she doesn't really, and hasn't since she was nine, like had a real life off camera.

Everything has been worked out online.

Yes.

I think that is so huge is like, we're still kind of catching up our understanding of just how much this technology has changed all of our lives, let alone people who live these like influencer lifestyles, lifestyles, where it's like truly the amount of your life, the percentage of your life that's not public is slim.

And I think that it's like we still have to hold people accountable, whether they're in the public eye or not.

But we can also like realize like the actual context for these things and like the conditions that produce these things.

One thing I will add before we keep going with this timeline is that like there is obviously discussion that I've seen from lesbians online about the the things that Jojo Siwa says about like for example the word lesbian or whether or not she has she identifies with the lesbian label and obviously I'm not here to police any lesbians feelings about any of this but what I will say is all of this stuff gets amplified a lot by people who are not lesbians and have no stake in the well-being of queer people generally like When I was putting together notes for this episode, there was so much commentary on Jojo Siwa from heterosexual men who ultimately really just wanted to talk about how Jojo Siwa's cringe and look at her, but then they'll throw in a like, and this is what she's done to the lesbian community so as to make it a sort of moral grandstand when the thing that they really want to talk about is like, look at JoJo Siwa's weird face paint.

A million percent.

You know what I mean?

Yes.

Yes.

And it's also like it's such an easy opportunity to like redefine who is and who isn't like a good queer.

When it's like when that power is being taken by like people who aren't even a part of the community, it's like, it makes me feel very uneasy.

Because of course, heterosexual people are going to define what is acceptable and valid in the queer community in their own heterosexual image, which is not to comment on any specific behavior JoJo Siwa has done or anything she specifically said, but just like any conversation about queer identity and what it represents and how public figures represent it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when it's coming from people outside the community.

I had a note in this outline about JoJo Siwa's relationships with other women, which have been very publicized through TikTok, which I am not on.

So

I'm going to yield to Kat.

I'm also just like not a,

this is the fourth time I said I'm not a lesbian in like the last six minutes.

I'm not a lesbian.

But, you know, I'm not a lesbian.

I'm not on TikTok.

I'm not really

attuned to the sort of lesbian, famous lesbian relationship drama on TikTok.

That's really not my area of expertise.

So I yield to you.

So basically, I was following along with this pretty closely in the beginning because I was following along with the Jojo Seawalk coming out journey very closely.

And as previously mentioned, she came out within this relationship.

She came out because she was dating a girl.

And the way that she met this girl is like JoJo and her family went on a cruise, and I believe it was a Disney cruise, and they like

JoJo,

it's cat bait, it's cat bait, it was catbait, and it's like she met this girl who was literally just like a normal person, she was not a celebrity, she had no relationship to being a public figure until her young lesbian relationship with JoJo Siwa is like publicized to the world and becomes international top-breaking news.

And like, that is such an unhealthy thing to happen to anyone.

And it also establishes like a dynamic between JoJo and this woman.

She's now a woman, Kylie Peru.

And it's like, she still has this leftover social media following from this like brief relationship with JoJo Siwa.

It will follow her for the rest of her life.

From when they were both children.

From when they were both children.

Like when you Google her name for the rest of her life, it will, this will always follow her.

This will always be a shadow on her.

And I think that's so unfair.

Like, who wants their relationship when they were like 18, 19, or younger to follow them and be the one thing that most people know about them?

Like, that sounds like hell.

It's like Sam the Waiter from Seattle.

It sure is.

Shout out Buy Sister.

He's always going to be...

Sorry.

I don't know why.

I can't.

Kat and I can't talk an hour without.

some form of BiSister coming up.

But yeah, Sam the Waiter is always going to be Sam the Waiter.

At least to me.

Exactly.

And like,

I find that so unfair for both of them on an individual level.

And it's also like a very difficult, I can only imagine, way to be in a relationship, especially at a young age, like to be in a relationship like that

on the public eye.

That's the case for like heterosexual young teenage couples in the public eye.

Being queer, being in a lesbian relationship on top of that, it adds a further layer of complexity.

And their relationship is like splashed all over the place.

After this, like after their relationship ends, they break up.

Jojo goes on to date like other people of varying degrees of being a public figure.

And in 2023, JoJo made a TikTok where in the TikTok, she's basically insinuating that in her relationships, there was love bombing and clout chasing and that young women were dating her for clout.

And she made that TikTok and then one of her recent ex-partners made a TikTok response where she said that Jojo was directing a lot of her hate and harassment their way.

And she also said that like JoJo was like very hot and cold in the relationship and like all of these details that I honestly don't even want to know because it's like there were allegations of toxicity in the relationship, but it's also like stuff that is hard to parse and that I don't even necessarily want to parse.

It just is like it's so intimate with these people who are so young.

I think the one thing that's important to note about it is like you have two things going on here.

You have like a power dynamic where JoJo is obviously more famous.

And this is something that her partner, her former partner, like pointed out: is like, you have all the power in these relationships.

You have the platform in these relationships.

And I think that is an important dynamic to point out because it's like whenever there's a power dynamic, it's something that can be exploited.

And the other thing that I think is so crucial to understand here is like with Jojo's knowledge, but outside of her direct control, there's all of this like harassment that is coming these young women's way after these breakups.

And I think it's totally fair to call Jojo out, like you're directing harassment, like you're now like doing something that you know is going to result in harassment.

It's also just like without necessarily JoJo's control.

This is the environment that's created around these relationships is you have all this public interest and you have these very young people who are going to be like sending these young women messages like forever.

And I think that is also just such an unfortunate byproduct of like digital young celebrity.

And it is just such an unfortunate dynamic to add into like the messiness of these like young relationships.

I'm trying to think if I have anything to add, but like I really don't have, first of all, that was extremely astute.

And second of all, like I don't really have a desire to comment again on like 18 year old lesbian relationships.

I don't know if I've mentioned in this in this episode, but I'm not a lesbian.

And I'm also like 26.

Right.

No, it already feels like such a world away from like what it's like to be that age and in relationships at that age.

Yeah.

And like, I would go so far as to say that like probably a lot of other people should be like way less invested in very young people's celebrity relationships than they are.

That's just like my two cents on that.

Yeah.

And also like regardless of where these relationships fall, there's nothing that public participation in them can make it better.

Like, we don't really know what's happening in these relationships.

And us knowing more and us participating in this and us driving harassment toward these young women, that's not going to help anyone.

Should we talk about Big Brother?

Yes.

Okay, so very, very recently, Jojo, who is now 22 years old,

goes on a reality competition show called Big Brother.

Before we started recording, I was like, Kat, do you know

What like the basic premise of the competition of big brother is because I don't I've never watched it and she was like no

I Was like let me pull up the big brother wiki like the fandom wiki

Big Brother is I don't think it's like for the gays generally I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm sure some people are gonna watch this and be like I love big brother.

I mean, you know, good for you, but I don't know.

The glimpses that I always catch from Big Brother is like, okay, it's a bunch of like celebrities living in a house and like Trisha Paytas is like probably there or something.

What I do know about Big Brother is like the name Big Brother is a callback to like Orwell.

Like Big Brother is always watching because I do know that like the concept of the show is rooted in this idea of it being like a social experiment.

And it started out with like normal people.

And like part of the gimmick is that they're in a house and there's cameras everywhere and they're being watched in these cameras at all times.

And as viewers of the show, you can like pay to get more footage than what is just in the show.

You can like opt into seeing these like 24-7 live streams and there are like discussion forums about like what people are doing at all times of the day in the Big Brother house.

Yeah, it does seem like a big part of what drives this show, as is the case with so many reality shows, is just like, let's drive these people completely fucking insane and like see how they do under those conditions.

Yes.

And Matt, I feel like we have a similar perspective on this, which is like, I, I don't condemn all reality TV.

It just, it all makes me so uncomfortable.

And I feel so bad.

I feel so bad for people who are on reality TV.

I was talking to someone recently who is a former RuPaul's Drag Race girl.

I guess if you're a Rupa's Dragerace girl, you're forever forever a RuPaul's Dragerace girl.

Anyway, they were telling me, like, you know, with all the filming time that they would sleep like between four and six hours a night.

And I'm like, oh, that's why you're all on edge all the time.

Yeah.

But anyway, Jojo goes on Big Brother.

Notably in the background here, she is in a relationship with someone, a non-binary kind of micro-influencer, I would say,

who's not on the show with Jojo.

And as someone who doesn't watch Big Brother and who at this point wasn't paying a ton of attention to JoJo Siwa, the first headlines that I got out of this were about Mickey Rourke, her 72-year-old castmate, saying something really, really, really, really homophobic and violent to her.

Do you remember this?

I do remember this.

I don't remember exactly what he said, but I remember being like, that's really bad.

What he said was, and honest content warning for lesbophobic, violent language, skip forward 15 seconds if you want.

Mickey Rourke asked Jojo regarding her relationship with a non-binary person.

He said, do you like girls or boys?

And then he followed that up with, if I stay on this show longer than four days, you won't be gay anymore.

Which is, I think, most people understood to just be like a threat of corrective rape.

Yeah.

I mean, I think this is something that I've experienced in like real life from men.

This is something that is like a very common trope of an experience that you will have as a queer woman.

Like any kind of queer woman will experience this because it's like with men, with heterosexual men, it's like they want to exert dominance over you and subjugate you by demeaning and undermining your sexuality and basically saying like, well, I have the power over you.

And so I'm going to express that by making these kinds of like veiled threats.

And it runs the gamut.

It runs the gamut from being like, oh, I'm going to be your boyfriend, which is the same thing in just like nicer language, to like, I am going to like rape you.

And sometimes they will say just exactly that.

And sometimes they will just say like, oh, well, we're going to hook up or you would hook up with me or something like that.

And it is very violent and it is very dehumanizing and it is all too common.

Like I imagine that probably most queer women have had an experience like this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so on the show, Jojo is kind of like, dude, like you can't fucking say that.

And it's clearly makes her really uncomfortable and upset.

And she is most immediately comforted by her castmate, English television personality, 10 years her senior, 32 years old, Chris Hughes.

Jojo Siwa and Chris Hughes spend the rest of the season basically like flirting with each other on screen.

And this leads to allegations against Jojo Siwa of emotionally cheating on her partner who was, you know, waiting for her at home watching this unfurl on TV.

After the filming of the season was done, Jojo's partner flew out to come to the after party for like, I think, like the premiere, the screening, or whatever for the show.

And it was at that after party that Jojo broke up with them, you know, presumably to then go on and be in a relationship with Chris Hughes, which we'll talk about like the how that factors into her sexuality and lesbian identity and stuff in a second.

But a lot of people will talk about this as like, again, it's like anytime a public figure does something shitty, it like always becomes talked about like murder.

I think this is like an undeniably shitty thing to do to a partner.

Like nobody wants to like say like, goodbye, sweetheart, and then go and watch as their like partner cheats on them on TV and then be dumped at the after party.

Like that is a horrible thing.

And it's also like an interpersonal conflict.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's also like the whole situation is so bizarre and not normal.

Like this is not something something that would normally happen.

This is a manufactured, literal social experiment run on Jojo Siwa and these other people.

And, like, this is what happened as a result of those unnatural artificial conditions, which is not to say that Jojo had no autonomy, but rather just to say, like, this is a weird progression of events.

It's really weird the way that this all unfolded.

And, like, this isn't how normal life works.

Yes.

And

again, because people are going to be like,

what?

Are you

making cheater apologia?

And again, it's like, no.

But I think that the, I'm going to harken back to what you said

earlier in this episode, which is that like, I don't think public participation benefits anybody involved.

It doesn't.

Because it's like, if you had empathy for these people, you would want them to be left alone.

But what we instead see is we see this like vultures circling like this drama.

And it's like that in itself is like, like, it's funny to me how the behavior of the public figure is always crucified, but the behavior of the viewer is treated as this like morally neutral thing.

When in reality, it's like caring this much about like interpersonal conflict and like leering at it and like treating it this way.

That's also not like a morally like righteous thing to do.

Yeah.

One other thing I want to note about Big Brother before we get into like sexuality labels and stuff that people also get really invested in when it comes to Jojo Siwa.

Understandably, to a certain extent, give me a minute.

But another thing that happens during the Big Brother season is that Jojo Siwa, while sitting kind of cradled by Chris Hughes, confesses to Big Brother, the, you know, plastic light up eye that they have to confess secrets to in the show, that she is having this like very complex questioning of her own gender.

And she talks about really relating to the people in her life who are non-binary.

And it's so crazy because she's saying this to the literal like big brother I on the show.

But again, this is Jojo Siwa's entire life.

Yes.

Not to be like too like annoying and like quippy about this, but like when it comes to Jojo Siwa, like we are big brother.

Like we are all watching her.

Like it's the Truman show from the time she was nine.

Yeah.

This is just how her life has always been.

And it's like so unhealthy.

And when you and I were talking about it yesterday, Kat, you described her entire life as like experimental.

Yes, like I was just thinking, like, Big Brother is a social experiment, and like the conditions of Big Brother are not natural, they're artificial.

And that also describes her entire life, like from the time that she could form memories, probably.

Like, her whole life is this, like, unnatural, not normal, not real.

Like, it's a surreal life to experience.

Yeah, yeah.

Obviously, once she officially defines her relationship with Chris Chris Hughes after the show, people are like, I thought you were a lesbian.

And JoJosiwa says a few things, none of which are worded well.

And we'll talk about them a little bit.

So she says,

I've always told myself I'm a lesbian.

And I think being here, I've realized, oh, I'm not a lesbian.

I'm queer.

And I think that's really cool.

She also, on a whim, when she was being filmed still on the show, she said, I'm switching letters.

Fuck the L.

I'm going to the Q.

In another interview she gave more recently, she said, when I came out at 17, I said, I'm pansexual because I don't care about gender.

But then I kind of boxed myself in and I said, I'm a lesbian.

And I think I did that because of pressure.

She noted that she felt the pressure came, quote, in a weird way from inside the LGBTQ community at times.

From people I know, from partners I've had, said Siwa.

You just get put in this world where you feel like, because you now have said, oh, I'm a lesbian, you have to be a lesbian.

And the truth is, sexuality is fluid.

Would you like to take it away on this one?

Yeah.

I mean, I think that like, she's describing this in a way that I can see why people take a lot of issue with various things that she's saying.

I also think that what she's experiencing and what she's talking about is really normal.

And people have a lot of very confusing, oftentimes very personal feelings mixed up with this type of thing.

And I can really empathize with what Jojo's talking about.

And I can also empathize with people who would be upset by it because it's like from my own personal experience, the relationships that I had with other girls and women in this age range, a lot of my former partners, when we were together, they'd be like, oh, I'm gay.

Or like, maybe they'd say they're bi and then maybe they'd say they're actually gay and maybe they would talk about like not knowing exactly what they were.

And then later on, they would date and marry men.

And I like, I can really relate to this through both sides of it, where it's like, I have felt feelings of betrayal that are almost hard to quite place when like things like that have happened.

And I also think that like it makes a lot of sense to me.

And I do believe that sexuality is fluid.

And we've also seen this explored more in pop culture.

I think about the song Good Luck Babe, which is like Chapel Roan's song written from the perspective of like, I dated this girl when we were young.

She didn't want to be out.

Now she's with a man.

Good luck, babe.

Like this literally one of the top songs of the year when it came out.

Obviously this is a big conversation that people are having and I think there's so much nuance within it, but I do, I do not hold it against JoJo Siwa, nor do I think that she is dishonest or unethical for like dating women, identifying as a lesbian, and then being like, actually, I'm not a lesbian.

I boxed myself in.

I am going to date men.

And the final layer of nuance is like, I also think that she still might not have everything figured out yet.

And the conditions in which she met this guy are that she was reacting to this like violent, homophobic thing that happened to her.

I am not in her head, so I can't piece together like what's going on here with that perspective.

I just think like I want to give her, extend her a lot of grace in figuring this out because she's going through things that I can't even imagine, and she's also going through things that I know very well.

And that within that messiness, like I don't want her to be penalized for going through something that is very human and actually very common.

Yeah.

Obviously, I can't speak to the lesbian experience portion of this because I don't know if I've mentioned in this episode, but I'm not a lesbian.

But, you know, obviously externalizing the pressure to identify as a lesbian versus like sexual fluidity both makes sense and can feel to someone reading that, especially a young lesbian viewer, like, wait, why are you pinning this on me?

Like, I can really understand why everyone feels the way that they do when quotes like this come out.

Also, I will not pretend that there's anything graceful about the quote, fuck the L, I'm going to the Q.

I'm not here to white knight on behalf of those statements.

But, you know, what I will say when it comes to her feeling like she had to identify, you know, straightforwardly as a lesbian when she came out is just from the angle of this is someone again who from the time she was nine has had to neatly package every part of her identity into something that people could very quickly understand and buy into

and i see this through that lens as just like very neatly in line with like everything else that she's always done and felt like she's had to do to sell herself to the masses like especially when like most people don't understand sexual fluidity.

Yes.

And most people don't accept sexual fluidity.

And so I think it makes sense that she was like, well, you know, and to be clear, that's not pressure that lesbians put on her.

That's pressure that she may have felt was put onto her that ultimately she was putting on herself to a certain extent.

But again, I just think all of it is like sad.

And like we've said numerous times, it's like public involvement hasn't really made this better for anybody, neither her nor the viewer.

Absolutely.

This is all such new territory.

Like this is stuff that lesbians have experienced over the course of generations throughout our history.

But it's also like the conditions of being a lesbian today are different than they were 10 years ago.

And something that I think is still not very well understood, like something that I learned about as a teenager to help me kind of try to work through what I was feeling with my sexuality was like learning about compulsory heterosexuality and then trying to figure out like, are my feelings real?

Are they inspired by my environment, by the culture that I live in?

Is this connected to like abusive things that people have said and done to me?

Is this connected to like feeling betrayed after a breakup?

Like it's, it's complicated and very messy and very nuanced.

And sometimes like you act in a way or you are confused in a way because of multiple things.

And I think that also probably plays into what's happening with JoJo is like we've identified all of these different factors that could be playing into like her just trying to figure herself out on this public stage.

The last portion of our episode is in the theme of branding devoted to Jojo Siwa's, what they're calling her latest rebrand.

So, JoJo Siwa, now in a relationship with Chris Hughes, debuted this very, very new look for her in this cover that she released of her singing Betty Davis Eyes.

She did so along some visuals of her wearing this almost, it's kind of like an over-the-top like 1960s housewife kind of look.

She has like the really heavy clown blush on.

She has this like,

it's very campy to me, honestly.

Yeah.

She has these like fake pearls, you know,

the red lip.

And, you know, she's posted a bunch of photos and videos of her in this in this style.

People are, you know, people who are listening to this podcast are very upset about it and uh and and sort of attributing it to some sinister implications of like the cultural tide of conservatism what did you make when you saw this i just think that like when i look at everything that's unfolded with jojo over the past few months including this i feel like she not that she's crashing out but rather i'm just like she seems to be doing a lot of different things in the public eye to provoke some sort of reaction out of people

And that is something that she has always done.

It's something that she was literally like groomed and trained to do.

Is like, as we were talking about at the beginning, she has been taught ever since she was a very young girl, you must provoke a reaction, and that reaction will be detrimental to you.

It will be people getting mad at you, and you have to keep doing that because that is your formula for existing in the world.

And so, I see this as a continuation of that formula, where it's like she's now rejecting the person who who she was like last year, like for the last couple of years.

She's doing this rejection and it's like, it's performative by nature.

She's literally performing.

And I don't know.

And I feel like I can't know whether this is also partially like, is this linked to what she's going through on a personal level?

Is this like kind of a branding attempt?

It's hard to piece out.

And the whole thing just like, it's funny to me that people are so obsessed with this because to me, I'm just like, it doesn't even interest me that much.

Yeah,

you know, I see a lot of people on like liberal slash left slash like queer internet kind of theorizing, like, is this a sign of the times that like Jojo Siwa is dressing conservatively?

I think that might be a little heavy-handed.

We'll see how she like, I guess, continues to dress.

I think right now we just have a couple TikToks.

But what I want people listening, especially to this podcast, to remember is that despite everything, you know, all of like the kind of clowning on JoJo Siwa that comes from our portion of the internet, Jojo's main base is young kids and their parents.

The money is especially coming from their parents.

And

I just want people to remember the level of scrutiny and homophobic harassment that JoJo Siwa has been on the receiving end of, honestly, even before she came out, from swaths of the internet that are much bigger than like our little gay corner.

And I was reminded of this when she debuted this new look, and you had some prominent conservatives.

Benny Johnson wrote, pop star Jojo Siwa's rebrand from radical lesbian activist to a straight trad girlfriend needs to be studied.

We all know why this really happened.

Woke is dead.

Nature is healing.

And then we have another one from Hazel Appleyard, incredible name.

She is like a turf Twitter influencer over the pond in the UK, Turf Island.

She wrote, Jojo Siwa has done so much damage to the kids who looked up to her while she sweaked alcohol on stage, clad in rainbows and promoting transgenderism.

And now she just expects us to forget it all?

I just want people to remember that there are very loud voices on the other side.

Like, Everyone has a loud opinion about JoJo Siwa, not just like the queers online who are giggling about it.

Everyone.

I certainly think this is a bizarre look for Jojo,

but I guess I just always want to remind people when it comes to her, like she, like I said at the top of the episode, she is the site upon which so many people project so many feelings about sexuality and gender onto.

Yes.

And it's also like when these conservative accounts are reading so much into these things, it's like, it almost makes me think, and perhaps this is overly optimistic, but I almost feel like Jojo is trolling them a little bit because it's like, I actually don't think she, like,

Jojo's UA for D chess.

Honestly,

it's more likely than you think.

Like, she's, she's a smart young woman.

I don't think she's doing this to provoke, like, Benny Johnson or this, like, this specific turf.

Hazel Apple Yard.

Get her name right, Kat.

It's like the way that Benny Johnson takes this picture of her on stage is like, she was a radical lesbian activist.

She wasn't.

She wasn't like a radical lesbian activist.

That's a performance.

And so is the music video.

Like these are both costumes.

She's just wearing costumes and people are like projecting, taking it and like extrapolating her whole life from them and they're projecting so much onto her.

And it's like, I do have to wonder if maybe some of the way that she's acting now is a little bit in response to the absurdity of all of this.

And knowing, I think baseline, she knows how to get and profit from attention.

And so 100%, there's some of that coming in here.

But it's also like, as far as we know, she has not yet become a real trad wife.

Like she is not, like, this is literally just like a costume.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I want to end this on Jojo Siwa is about to embark on yet another tour, the Infinity Heart tour, for which there were a bunch of American dates and are a bunch of European dates.

So get your tickets quick or don't.

I mean, I have no investment in this.

But she canceled the American leg of the tour.

And people are theorizing, and this is like, this is in The Sun, the UK newspaper The Sun.

So like take it with a grain of salt.

But there have been rumors that Chris Hughes and JoJo Siwa are in talks for a spin-off reality show of their own.

And I wanted to conclude there because it is like the most recent detail of JoJo Siwa's Siwa's life and career, but also it's like the Truman show never ends unless we stop feeding it, you know?

Yes.

And

sorry, yeah, that's it.

And like this, the appetite and the audience and the market value of this reality show would not exist if people were normal about JoJo Siwa.

Like people are feeding the beast.

And I genuinely think like there's a little bit of knowing participation on both sides because it's like when people are engaging this heavily in Jojo Siwa as a topic, you know, even if you don't want to admit it, that you are like perpetuating the Jojo Siwa phenomenon.

And Jojo Siwan knows she's perpetuating the Jojo Siwa phenomenon.

So we're all just kind of like choosing to have Jojo Siwa be like one of the shows that are available for us to watch.

I feel like everything you just said also applies really, really well to the online spectacle of Eugenia Cooney.

Ooh,

which

I would love to elaborate on, but we have been recording for

two hours.

And my blood sugar is getting extraordinarily low.

And my parents are about to land at LGA.

Kat, thank you so much for joining me on this episode.

Again, I feel like we are at our best when we're talking about influencers with complex public images.

It is one of our favorite things to talk about.

We do it all day and night, even when we're not recording.

If you, the listener, would like us to do this again more often, what have you, let me know.

Oh,

you know what we never did, which I actually thought that we should do?

What?

It's too late now.

They've already left me a one-star review.

we we haven't done a vocal fry disclaimer in a while oh yes and some people i guess haven't seen or have willfully willfully ignored the episodes where we have done vocal fry disclaimers and i've noticed that some of you have been leaving my podcast one star reviews talking about the vocal fry so

i guess if you were going to do that over this episode you already have and it is what it is cat i love you thank you so much for being here

thank you so much for having me.

And thank you, the listeners, so much for joining us on this episode.

If you would like to find more of Kat, I will link all of her stuff as always in the episode description.

Please go buy a subscription to her independent journalism over at Spitfire News.

It is truly some of the best influencer and celebrity political reporting happening online right now.

And Kat definitely deserves the support that you've given to this show.

I am so grateful grateful for you.

Thank you for being here.

I love you.

And until next time, stay fruity.