Maybe you’ve seen footage of JoJo Siwa stomp-dancing like Shrek if he was on a risky cocktail of MDMA and three Panera Bread lemonades, exuding the kind of expired precociousness that immediately betrays her as a former child star. Or perhaps you heard about the time she fireman-carried Tom Sandoval on Special Forces, or peed in a litter box on Celebrity Big Brother U.K., or danced in the first same-sex pairing on Dancing With the Stars. It could be that you caught wind of her beef with DaBaby, or Bhad Bhabie, or maybe you beefed with your own baby inside a Claire’s because, as a parent, you refused to further contribute to the more than $400 million in hairbow sales JoJo Siwa has generated since 2016. Maybe you’ve read headlines like “JoJo Siwa Got Drunk at Disney for Her 21st Birthday,” “JoJo Siwa Reveals She Realized She Was Gay at Disney World,” or “JoJo Siwa Officially Ends Her Feud With Candace Cameron Bure.” And probably, when you did, you thought: “Wait … isn’t JoJo Siwa that little girl from Dance Moms? The reality show where Abby Lee Miller once reversed her Rascal scooter all the way up an inclined theater aisle, directly onto the streets of Manhattan, and into an NYPD precinct to file a police report because someone told her to put away her cellphone?”
Well … that little girl grew up. And whether it’s through television, music, general content creation over the past 12 years, her extensive merchandise deals, or merely the fact that she drives a Lamborghini around L.A. with her own face plastered all over it—one way or another, JoJo Siwa has entered your atmosphere. She is the Whac-a-Mole of pop culture; just when you think she’s been defeated, she pops back up in an entirely different medium with a different look and a different narrative. (The telltale Minion-like quality of her voice, however, stays exactly the same.) When JoJo aged out of hawking hairbows to the under-10 demographic, she transitioned from having true fans to mostly accruing observers who attempt to figure out how she remains so famous, and why they (OK, we) can’t look away. One could say she has no real talent beyond being a decent reality television show competitor—the Gen Z Johnny Bananas. But Johnny Bananas doesn’t generate these kinds of headlines or ticket sales …
True observers will tell you that JoJo Siwa’s greatest talent is marketing. She is Don Draper if the only thing he ever had to advertise was himself (and also if he only pretended to drink liquor for the vibes). To her, all press is good press, all content is good content—and she is capable of creating so much press and so much content. Her shockingly tenured stay in the public eye can be explained only by an almost inhuman resistance to shame, and for the 57 million combined Instagram and TikTok followers who watch along … it’s starting to feel like she’s the one conducting a social experiment on us.
In 2020, Time named then-17-year-old JoJo one of its 100 Most Influential People, right next to Bong Joon Ho in the “Artists” section. But when she inevitably ends up on that list again, I might suggest moving her over to Science and Innovation. Because never have I felt more like a lab rat peering out from behind the bars of a testing cage than I did this week, when a new 19-second JoJo Siwa music video crash-landed on the internet with a lack of the audio-visual pleasure we might normally expect from “music” or “videos.” In said video, the visage of JoJo Siwa materializes in a 1950s-like blond coif, singing a snippet of the Kim Carnes song “Bette Davis Eyes.” Given the femme outfit, the Snow-White-like peering into the ether, and the eerie quality of the film, my immediate thought was: “This is a level of AI so obvious that even a boomer currently texting their kids an amazing photo of a dog carrying a kitten to safety from a fire could recognize the markings.” But then I saw that it had been posted on JoJo’s verified TikTok account. So I turned the sound on. And despite the 20 million-ish words I’ve written in my career as a journalist, I’m finding myself at an utter loss for how to explain the music I heard there. The closest I can get is maybe … RFK Jr. singing into an oscillating fan during his final moments before getting the vocal node surgery Brittany Snow gets in Pitch Perfect?
To the uninitiated, this “Bette Davis Eyes” teaser could simply register as 19 seconds of some of the worst art you’ve ever heard or seen, knowing full well that you’ll spend the rest of your time on earth having nightmares about it. But for those in the know, this clip—the outfit, the song choice, and the casual fact that JoJo, who has publicly identified as a lesbian since 2021, just started very publicly dating her Celebrity Big Brother UK costar Chris Hughes (something of a musician himself, and also, a man)—is a rich, rich text of mess. And maybe a little bit of legitimate foreboding. As a romantic relationship so strange it could have been created only in whatever uncanny valley the decommissioned Chris Harrison now resides in unfolds before us, and as the threat of a full Spotify release of this cover hangs over us, it’s time to answer some very reasonable questions about a person who just turned 22 a few weeks ago, but has already created more chaos (and rainbow-themed paraphernalia) than most of us will know in a lifetime.
So, how did JoJo’s career in showbiz start out? Pretty chill experience as a child star?
In Joelle Joanie Siwa’s first appearance on Dance Moms, Abby Lee Miller made her perform in a full burka. The footage of the dance is … as harrowing as it is hilarious, a very specific vibe and one that JoJo would carry into the rest of her career. Yes, Miller was a wickedly funny TV character who regularly and openly ranked children, and got into unreal verbal altercations with mothers—but she was also a monster! Watching her scream at a 9-year-old JoJo who has the face and general disposition of a French bulldog puppy will never not be upsetting. But still not as upsetting as hearing from little JoJo herself that her mom, Jessalynn, has been dying her hair since she was 2 years old: “I’m not a natural blond, I’m actually a natural brown, so I get brown roots.” Except she says the last two words like “bwown woots” because she was an actual child. On the show, Jessalynn explains, “Nothing’s off limits when it comes to doing what I think will benefit JoJo.”
This is why we retain empathy for JoJo Siwa, even when she makes doing so feel almost impossible. We think of the bwown woots she was never permitted to have because she was treated like a business more than a human child, and how Miller didn’t let those little girls go to school—so, now, when they, for example, whittle their teeth down to nubbins to get $50,000 stark white veneers, we simply have to be patient and pick up the pieces.
I’ve never seen Dance Moms—so why do I still recognize JoJo Siwa?
I came to know JoJo Siwa as a cultural necessity sometime around 2019, when I saw now-SNL-cast-member Chloe Fineman doing an impression of her explaining why her makeup line at Claire’s was positively riddled with asbestos: “A lot of y’all have been asking me, and NO, I do not have a boyfriend. … What I do have is … asbestos!” But otherwise, the quickest path to discovering JoJo Siwa from the years of 2015 to 2020 was to personally know a child. Almost any child would do. Because after becoming well known for her giant, colorful bows on Dance Moms, 13-year-old JoJo signed a talent contract with Nickelodeon that included stocking every Target, Walmart, and JCPenney in the country with JoJo Siwa shower curtains, JoJo Siwa backpacks, JoJo Siwa umbrellas, and of course, JoJo Siwa hair bows the size of Yorkshire terriers, and with the same amount of instant appeal to children.
So what is her … job? Is she a singer?
She’s more of a personality than a singer or a dancer, although she does both of those things. These days, you might call that an influencer, but JoJo Siwa doesn’t encourage you to buy lip plumping serums or air fryers—she just gets you to buy more JoJo Siwa. Around the time she signed with Nickelodeon, JoJo also launched her YouTube channel to immediate Pied-Piper-like results (famously, North West was a big fan). She appealed to little kids with her colorful persona, signature high ponytail, and constant roar of a voice. And then, and this is what ultimately led us here today, she began to dabble in singing. This was perhaps not something she had any right to dabble in, but there’s simply no denying that the music video for “Boomerang”—a song about never letting the haters get their way—currently sits at 1 billion views, only one of a few hundred music videos to reach such heights.
Has JoJo Siwa ever had any internet snafus that required her to come back like a boomerang, lest the haters get their way?
Growing up from adolescence into adulthood in the public eye—let alone on YouTube—isn’t easy. But one of the most impressive things about JoJo Siwa is how she’s never given in to the social pressure to not be annoying. When JoJo publicly came out as gay—a very big deal for a very young Nickelodeon star—in 2021, there was a noted outpouring of support instead of derision from the adult public. And in return for that public encouragement, with somehow even more confidence, JoJo increased her cringeworthy content tenfold.
There was the period after she cut her platinum hair when she kept making thirst traps dressed as Draco Malfoy. There was the time she used the wildest intonation imaginable to respond to a red carpet reporter: “DREAM GuESt on my PoDcaaaSt? Oh my gosh, I mean, let’s spice things up, how bout one of my exes?” (She was dressed in full Gene Simmons Kiss drag when she said this, and I have not stopped thinking about it.) But probably my personal favorite clown-shoe-internet-footprint was JoJo’s return to singing online after a lengthy break, wherein she strained so hard trying to belt the chorus of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Traitor” that you could literally see the blood rise from the base of her neck to the top of her her hairline in real time, leaving this caption hovering over her beet-red face: “The progress is crazy!!!” And then, of course, there was her personal rebrand as an adult ahead of the 2024 single “Karma”...
Did JoJo Siwa invent gay pop? Why did I hear that JoJo Siwa invented gay pop?
Plenty of child stars have had a metamorphosis into a more adult version of their public persona. Sometimes with a declarative song like “Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,” or by twerking on Robin Thicke. Or as it was in JoJo’s case, by telling any reporter who would listen: “No one has made this dramatic of a change yet. … I’m the first of a generation, and it’s very scary, but … somebody’s gotta do it.” And she was right—someone had to declare herself a “bad girl” in the very first line of her brand-new mature song, and then spend the entire music video for it on a strange lagoon almost getting to first base with women in various WWE-looking leotards.
JoJo’s insistence that she was launching a whole new identity with “Karma” made such a splash that Chloe Fineman finally got to brush off that JoJo Siwa impression for SNL, saying in a perfect Siwa-ccent: “I used to be rainbow sparkles, but now, I’m black sparkles.” And simply wearing a lot of bedazzled construction vests and saying “bitch” in her music would have been fine—it would have been camp. It was camp! The “Karma dance” is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen someone commit to with their whole chest (and fist and foot). The trouble came when JoJo told Billboard that she wanted to “start a new genre of music. … It’s called gay pop.”
This was received with some consternation. Popular queer music duo Tegan and Sara—formed in 1998!—stitched themselves staring silently into the camera with the news that JoJo had invented a brand-new genre, and soon JoJo was clarifying that she obviously didn’t invent gay pop … but perhaps she could be the CMO. (And, honestly … maybe?)
I’m so sorry, but who could this be-bowed CMO of gay pop you’ve described here today possibly be dating?
Well, a lot of people. JoJo has famously dated several women for short, intense periods of time, all ending in disaster and spawning passive-aggressive TikToks about being used for clout. So, when JoJo first began bonding with Chris Hughes on Celebrity Big Brother U.K., nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary. In private, people seem to really like JoJo, and if there’s one thing she’s going to do on her tour of reality shows, it’s form unexpected bonds with semi-famous straight men. Chris was a mostly beloved former Love Island U.K. contestant, deliverer of some of the single best TikTok audio sounds of all time, including an extremely stressed out, “Every fucking person in this place … fancies me,” and an extremely earnest, “Do you want me to rap, anyone, lift the mood a little?” For two people who seem to have clowns in their heads honking horns at 100 beep-beeps per minute, this seemed to be a platonic match made in heaven. And Chris and JoJo both frequently expressed as much on the show …
So what’s the problem?
Well, JoJo Siwa had a partner, Kath Ebbs, when she went on Celebrity Big Brother. So Kath was at home, watching live as JoJo and Chris’s behavior began to escalate into what really looked like an emotional affair, complete with cuddling, lingering touches, and at least one aforementioned litter box moment—all on national television. Still, Kath flew to the U.K. for the CBB wrap party, where JoJo promptly broke up with them—at least according to their 12-minute explainer video, because JoJo has never met a non-public-facing person in her life—before waiting a very polite three weeks and hard-launching a romantic relationship with Chris by way of an Instagram with a photo of them in bed together—on the first day of Pride Month.
Well, did anything harrowing happen on Celebrity Big Brother U.K. that may have escalated such a close bond between two former strangers?
Yeah: Mickey Rourke, a pile of rancid ground beef in a skin suit held together by a fedora and a Satanic prayer, called JoJo a homophobic slur within hours of the contestants arriving at the house; told the other contestants that he was going to “vote the lesbian out real quick” as soon as he got the chance; and told JoJo directly, “If I stay longer than four days, you won’t be gay anymore … I’ll tie you up.” It was … awful! And Rourke was soon kicked off the show for his behavior, but as a witness to most of this, Chris was the one to tell Rourke he couldn’t say things like that, and the one to comfort JoJo when she eventually broke down in tears.
How’s everyone handling this new JoJo-Chris relationship? Do we feel … good about it?
We don’t feel great about it! A 21-year-old trauma-bonding with a 32-year-old man in a vulnerable moment is a mistake many of us, across many spectrums, have made. But the compounding and more public-facing confusion here is that JoJo, erstwhile inventor of gay pop, came out as a lesbian in 2021. Consequently, she received a lot of support from the lesbian community. Fresh off of publicly dating a man for the first time, though, she turned around and told the Daily Mail that she “was pressured into calling myself a lesbian.” And while accepting that JoJo is 22 years old and that exploring sexual and gender fluidity, on social media or otherwise, is completely normal, the lesbian community has generally responded to that charge by asking: Uh, pressured by WHO?
So … what does this have to do with the “Bette Davis Eyes” cover, and why did that teaser feel like a threat?
JoJo is using her degree in marketing from Dance Moms University to do what she always does: frame this bonkers thing like it’s something that we’re begging for when we’ve never asked for anything less—which, astonishingly, does make us want it more. How does she do it?!
Alongside her 19 seconds of vocal chaos, she captioned the teaser: “After performing this song live and then seeing the beautiful response to it, I decided to go record a studio vocal…. I’m undecided if I should release it on Spotify or not…. Would you want me to?!!! if you would, I’m thinking maybe end of this week?” This implies that she will only release the remaining three minutes of this schadenfreude sandwich—which she’s clearly already made a music video for—if we really want her to. And in a sick way, we do want to hear the rest of this cover, except for this one sticky issue: Given her propensity to move with the internet tides, it really feels like JoJo might be trying to capitalize on the popularity of “trad wives” on her platform of choice, TikTok. And the anti-woke agenda is only too happy to co-opt JoJo’s new look in order to push a narrative that runs quite counter to her former narrative as a subversive lesbian. (JoJo has said she now identifies as “queer.”) Especially because this cover has become particularly attached to JoJo’s new relationship with a man, since she began singing—pause for wracking shudders—“Chris Hughes’s eyes” onstage literally the day after they announced the relationship.
Indeed, seeing the “Bette Davis Eyes” clip did make me feel a little like Lorelai Gilmore happening upon Rory cosplaying Donna Reed because Dean told her he liked how his mom cooked him steak and potatoes every night. “JoJo, this is not how we raised you—please say you’re just playing dress-up, sweetie!”
So … is the full cover of “Bette Davis Eyes” coming to streaming?
This could be a classic Rita Ora situation, where JoJo ultimately has to claim that she was hacked after realizing that people don’t really want her to release this cover, and just want to clown on how silly it sounds. But this is kind of JoJo’s whole thing. If you refuse to be embarrassed by your public perception, then you can really only win in the eyes of the one true beholder: JoJo Siwa. And in one of her final acts before—yes—the inevitable release of “Bette Davis Eyes” on Friday, JoJo has posted a TikTok heavily implying that she’s pregnant.
So, I guess I just have one final question: Could someone rap a little bit, lighten the mood?
