Like all former child stars who age into their stardom, social media sensation Jojo Siwa is attempting to evolve her squeaky-clean persona but in the TikTok era, the complex journey of balancing a child star’s established image with new self-expression is more sanitised than we’ve seen before, writes our new IMAGE.ie contributor, podcaster Jenny Claffey.
Dance Moms is one of those reality TV shows that hasn’t aged well. It existed long before any measures were put in place to protect its stars and before a social media following was guaranteed for its alumni; the fact that kids were centre stage to the chaos only feels extra icky.
While many fallen soldiers from this era of reality TV regret opening their doors to the cameras, a small percentage forged a new career on social media. Jojo Siwa is one of these people.
Jojo has enjoyed a flourishing career on social media, alongside her more mainstream ventures, including a Nickelodeon contract and a very lucrative merchandise deal. Her online content historically catered solely to a very young audience; if you knew a child who insisted on wearing oversized bows in 2017, it was probably because of Jojo Siwa.
Her YouTube channel currently has over 12 million subscribers, she has amassed over 45 million followers on TikTok and 11 million on Instagram. Her YouTube channel has since changed its name to XOMG POP!, the name of a kiddie pop group formed by Siwa and her mother Jessalyn in 2022, who now run the channel.
Jojo is still active on YouTube and focuses on releasing music, which until recently was catered to a very young audience. That was until this year when a new Jojo emerged – a raunchy Jojo, an edgy and off-the-wall Jojo, who was entering her bad-girl era. At least that’s what she told us in the run-up to her new song ‘Karma’s release.
Jojo promised this era would be provocative, groundbreaking and genre-defining. She was stepping out as an adult and no longer pandering to a young audience. Unfortunately what followed was deemed a little corny and at times, bizarre.
The promotional content for ‘Karma’ set expectations high. In an Instagram post, Jojo warned viewers of possible “disturbing or offensive” content that “may contain sexual themes, violence, strong language, traumatic scenarios and flashing lights”. When the music video for ‘Karma’ was released, she delivered on the flashing lights, but the rest was unsurprisingly nowhere to be found.
The entirety of ‘Karma’ and Jojo’s accompanying TikTok videos have become viral on social media, which, some may argue, is the best free promotion you can get. Jojo even made a nod to this in a TikTok saying “Like it or not, what’s been in your head the past three days?”.
@itsjojosiwa Just admit it’s a Guilty Pleasure???
This isn’t Jojo’s first brush with controversy. Like anyone with a large platform she’s come under fire for various reasons over the years, some more deserving than others. There was a Jojo Siwa board game with some questionable content, her defence of both Dance Moms matriarch Abby-Lee Miller and recently disgraced YouTuber Colleen Ballinger respectively did not go down well either – but the biggest controversy came in 2021 when she came out as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community.
With a largely Christian and conservative audience that loved Jojo’s squeaky-clean persona and doll-like appearance, her “coming out” did not go down well with many, but what she lost in conservative fans, she gained in allies. I can only imagine that for Jojo, this was a huge moment of self-determination; she finally seemed to be steering the ship.
Jojo Siwa’s role on Dance Moms was, for want of a better term, ‘the annoying kid’. She came onto the show in season 4 to shake things up, and she was not a fan favourite. If anything, her role was to be the one kid everyone hated, the audience included. Jojo has been primed from a young age to accept this role. Surely, putting a child in this environment has to warp their perception of reality; her loud personality and gregarious nature were rewarded with fame and fortune. With that though, comes haters, trolls and being the butt of the joke. Even the most head-strong adult would struggle with this, and many a reality TV villain has. So it’s not surprising that Jojo has leaned all the way into her vanilla ‘bad-girl’ persona, and seems to be largely oblivious, or unbothered, to the hate in her comments.
She proclaimed this to be her ‘Miley Bangerz Era’, referring to Miley Cyrus’ 2013 album Bangerz, and her accompanying image, which has become one of the most infamous rebrands of a child star to date, and most controversial.
Miley Cyrus’s Bangerz era was defined by her tongue hanging out of her mouth, a short pixie haircut and her infamous performance with Robin Thicke during the 2013 VMAs, where she twerked on stage wearing a nude-coloured latex bikini, and with one shake of a foam finger, Miley’s most controversial era was born.
While there was some valid criticism over cultural appropriation, the majority of the headlines that followed focused on Miley Cyrus’ new raunchy image and how it was inappropriate for her “young fans”. She would later comment to Rolling Stone, “I was creating attention for myself because I was dividing myself from a character I had played”, and this performance was not her only attempt in doing so.
In 2008 she posed for Vanity Fair, shot by Annie Lebowitz. Miley was draped in just a bedsheet and wore smudged red lipstick in a sartorial choice that according to her recent TikTok series Used To Be Young was made to distance herself from Hannah Montana. The issue here, of course, was Miley was only 15 years old in 2008. She was forced to apologise, an apology she retracted in 2018.
It’s clear that Jojo relates to Miley, and it’s easy to see why; they were both child stars who have been in openly gay relationships and have been scrutinised by the media as they entered adulthood. However, where Miley’s rebellion was shocking and sometimes culturally insensitive, it never felt contrived. In comparison, Jojo feels sanitised, as if her self-expression is being contained into a digestible format, predestined for online virality but not controversial enough to alienate more fans. It’s Bad Girl Lite™.
Child stars rebelling against their formerly squeaky-clean image is nothing new; Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Lindsay Lohan are just some of the young women who renounced their once family-friendly persona in a bid to control their public image, only to be sexualised and shamed in the press. These rebellions existed within the parameters of the early 2000s though, a time when female celebrities at large existed on a binary; they were either sweet and innocent or sexy, a binary that seems less prevalent today.
Jojo’s rebrand – just like Miley’s Bangerz era – is very much of its time. Her new image is not designed to offend, but to go viral; it’s weird enough to get people talking, but in no way offensive or worthy of “cancellation”. She recently celebrated her 21st birthday at Disneyland and got “drunk as f*ck”, to quote the performer, and there’s video evidence to prove it. Ever the show-woman, Jojo is shown encouraging those around her to join in on an acapella rendition of her single ‘Karma’. Nobody seemed to know the words, but she still made headlines.
This summer, Jojo performed at London’s Mighty Hoopla Festival, in what was certainly one of the campest performances of the weekend; quite the achievement at a festival predominantly catered to the LGBTQIA+ community. Wearing a bedazzled rainbow bodysuit and her now signature facepaint, she delivered a motivational speech to the audience, proudly proclaiming, “If for some reason you feel like you got nobody, just remember, you got me”.
If this new era is a carefully contrived performance that we’re all playing into, then Jojo Siwa might just be the next Andy Kaufmann. If not, then there is still no denying that after all these years, she can still channel that ‘annoying kid’ energy, and get people talking.
Additional photography by @itsjojosiwa.
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