A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Jojo Siwa： The Internet’s Court Jester

00:00:00.440 Well, actually, can I start by saying, have you listened to the Bette Davis-Eyes cover that was put on Spotify?

00:00:05.500 I sure have.

00:00:06.840 Like, it's not that bad.

00:00:09.160 It's not that bad.

00:00:10.200 I think it's like, especially in the beginning, I actually think it's kind of good.

00:00:13.460 And then it gets into more auto-tune and it gets a little rough around the edges.

00:00:17.760 Yeah, there's a lot of pitch correction there.

00:00:19.500 But you know what?

00:00:20.240 She did what she had to do.

00:00:21.660 Everyone needs to chill out.

00:00:22.520 hello hello and welcome to a bit fruity the show where sometimes we talk about fascism

00:00:35.560 and other times we talk about jojo siwa 0.90

00:00:40.000 jojo siwa calls her boyfriend's balls jimmy and timmy and the reason 0.97

00:00:50.160 and the reason i know that is because anytime the former child star who's had her brain and 0.98

00:00:58.580 body commodified for mass consumption since she was nine years old does anything there's an entire

00:01:04.780 cottage industry of both mainstream tabloid news outlets and content creators devoted to making

00:01:11.760 sure that as many people as possible have as strong of feelings as possible about it so today

00:01:18.860 I'm gonna give you mine. Jojo Siwa is a 22-year-old who has been a lot of things.

00:01:25.440 A bubbly reality TV child star, a 13-year-old merchandising mogul, a 16-year-old selling out

00:01:32.500 arenas built for pop stars, the reason kids' parents tuned into Nickelodeon, and the reason

00:01:38.180 kids' parents boycotted Nickelodeon. A lesbian icon, a renounced former lesbian icon. But more

00:01:45.840 than anything, she has made a lot of people a lot of money. Today, I want to talk about Jojo Siwa,

00:01:54.080 both the person and the person-shaped sight upon which millions of people have for now more than

00:02:00.660 a decade projected their cultural anxieties about girlhood, gender, sexuality, and growing up. And

00:02:08.140 if I do this episode justice, I hope that we can all walk away feeling good about bringing the

00:02:14.140 temperature down on the discourse around Jojo Siwa. To help me do that is, of course, one of my

00:02:21.300 best friends, Kat Tenbarge. Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for having me again. I'm so

00:02:28.480 excited to talk about this topic. I feel like you and I are at our best when we're talking about

00:02:33.660 influencers with complex public images. 100%. This is like our special interest. Before we get into

00:02:40.440 today's episode if you would like to support the show if you would like more of the show

00:02:44.460 you can find that over on patreon that will be linked in the episode description on spotify

00:02:49.500 youtube wherever you're listening to this i have some bonus episodes over there i'm about to put

00:02:54.920 up a new one that i just recorded with the feminist twitch streamer caroline kwan about the cold play

00:03:00.500 couple surveillance state and about the internet's obsession with prying into what should be

00:03:07.640 innocuous funny videos and turning them into true crime panopticons. But for now, Kat, how do you

00:03:14.760 feel going into this episode about Jojo Siwa considering the conversation constantly swirling

00:03:21.120 around her for the last like 13 years? It's very surreal because it's like Jojo has been so

00:03:27.280 oversaturated in online and traditional media for like a decade at this point. And it is very

00:03:34.760 surreal to have that image of a very young girl turn into this image of like what she's currently

00:03:40.960 being portrayed of which she's in like her classic like post Disney Channel messy era and it makes me

00:03:49.260 just feel a little bit sick watching how it plays out today because I'm just like we're repeating

00:03:54.580 that history of what we've seen with people who previously had that position people like Miley

00:03:59.200 Cyrus. Someone who she will often compare herself to. Yes. Shall we jump in with a little early

00:04:06.200 life? You know, we love chronology on the A Bit Fruity podcast. So Jojo Joelle Siwa is born in

00:04:14.480 2003 in Omaha, Nebraska. She grows up there competitive dancing. Her mom, Jessalyn, who

00:04:22.100 you definitely know more about than I do because I text you about doing this episode and you were

00:04:26.460 like i'm dying to talk about jesseline siwa and i was like is that jojo's full name

00:04:31.480 but so she grows up with you know her mom who owns a dance studio her dad's a chiropractor

00:04:38.260 i threw in a picture of them into this outline that uh i shared with you and one thing that's

00:04:44.820 really interesting to me about jojo siwa's family is that they all look the same like and i don't

00:04:50.680 even mean that and like obviously like kids look like their parents but it's like her dad looks

00:04:54.540 like her mom the kids look everyone looks the same yeah which is just like it's very it's giving

00:05:00.140 very much like white nebraska family yes that's what i was gonna say is like i've never been to

00:05:05.060 nebraska but from growing up in like a similar suburban flyover state it's like this is the

00:05:11.880 archetypal family mom owning a dance studio like daughter in competitive dance like i know this

00:05:18.200 story very, very well. I love the idea that Ethel Kane's A House in Nebraska is about JoJo Siwa.

00:05:26.100 JoJo Siwa does still call home that house in Nebraska.

00:05:31.660 JoJo begins performing at two years old and she says her mom recognized her talent really early

00:05:37.800 on and enrolled her in dance. Among the period where JoJo was growing up, this was such a like

00:05:45.400 upper middle class status symbol to have a young child enrolled in dancing a young girl

00:05:51.220 specifically enrolled in dancing from like a very young age this is like a status symbol of that

00:05:56.460 type of upper middle class wealth and it doesn't really matter if the child has innate talent or

00:06:02.700 not it's more about how much money you can pour into this because it's like I grew up in this

00:06:08.900 environment I went to one of these types of dance studios from a young age and it's like it it really

00:06:14.820 is not like oh jojo's mother like recognized this talent in her from two years old i don't believe

00:06:19.600 that's the case i think it's like you see these women grow up and their talent is molded by the

00:06:25.400 fact that they have thousands of dollars poured into like their dance training and they get

00:06:29.980 specialized attention and they you get more roles you get more opportunities like the more your

00:06:35.180 parents pay i'm so fascinated by these insights you seem to have about everything that's the

00:06:42.220 That's the well-rounded Cincinnati upbringing that it gets you.

00:06:48.600 So this childhood of dance ultimately results in Jojo Siwa getting cast in one of Abby Lee Miller's spinoff shows.

00:06:57.700 So it wasn't Dance Moms.

00:06:58.840 It was like a smaller production.

00:07:00.600 She was nine years old when this happens.

00:07:02.220 And she does well in that competition, notably when it comes to reality TV.

00:07:06.680 She showed a lot of personality. 1.00

00:07:08.640 She's loud. 1.00

00:07:09.420 She's sassy.

00:07:10.020 and when she's 11 the Abby Lee Miller dance producers call her in to join the cast of Dance

00:07:17.820 Moms where she just continues to get renewed because she's such a star now I was not much

00:07:23.740 of a Dance Moms person growing up I think as a kid I turned on one episode and I was like whoa

00:07:28.680 this is none of my business I watched Dance Moms whenever I was allowed to which my parents hated

00:07:38.860 it i technically was not allowed to watch dance moms i mean it was televised child abuse yes and

00:07:45.920 i think that my parents probably just thought it was like trashy tv which it is but it's also like

00:07:50.920 the way that i watched it as a young girl it was aspirational to me because again it's like it's a

00:07:57.280 status symbol if you are in this type of position it's not necessarily that you were blessed with

00:08:01.780 this talent it's just that you are you have really rich parents and so it's aspirational to see like

00:08:07.480 that kind of experience as like a young dancer. And it really capitalized on that culture in

00:08:13.900 Ohio, in Pennsylvania, in the Midwest, like in these spaces.

00:08:18.760 So JoJo Siwa was on Dance Moms for two years. And some of the footage from I mean, Dance Moms

00:08:25.180 in general is just fucking crazy. We're gonna play a clip in a second. But one thing that is

00:08:29.540 really interesting to me about her is I was watching actually JoJo Siwa's interview on

00:08:34.760 call her daddy it's interesting the way she tells it she always had an innate sense for how to attain

00:08:41.980 the spotlight she talks about how because okay this is this is something i do remember from

00:08:46.680 dance moms if you were not a dance moms watcher i'll try to explain it but basically the way that

00:08:50.920 they ranked the girls i think every week every episode was through the pyramid the dance pyramid

00:08:56.640 and if you were the best you got put at the top of the pyramid and there was always drama and like

00:09:01.020 scuffling between the girls and their moms, notably, about where the girls were placed.

00:09:06.960 JoJo described in that interview how her mom, Jessalyn, would be furious even after the camera

00:09:12.880 stopped rolling when they went to the car if she was put at the bottom of the pyramid.

00:09:16.800 And JoJo, age 11, would be like, but if I get put at the bottom, I'm getting more airtime.

00:09:22.480 I'm getting a longer storyline within the episode.

00:09:26.560 And she was like, it's not really about the pat on the back of getting put at the top

00:09:30.300 of the pyramid. It's about having her face on the screen of Dance Moms. And that is such a crazy

00:09:35.900 insight for a child to have. It's also like yesterday you had sent me a compilation of clips

00:09:42.260 from Dance Moms that were intended to portray this tiny young girl in a negative light, which

00:09:48.960 it's not surprising because that's literally what the show was. But nonetheless, watching those

00:09:53.340 clips, one of the things that stood out to me is like the back and forth between Jojo and Jessalyn

00:09:59.240 that is just like the calculated nature of it so for example Jojo was really upset after a classic

00:10:06.920 hallmark of dance moms is Abby Lee Miller's screaming at these children emotionally abusing

00:10:11.420 these children and Jojo looks like she's about to cry and Jessalyn is like in a very like sing-songy 0.51

00:10:17.700 optimistic tone she's like are you gonna let her like make you cry you're gonna let her get you to

00:10:22.940 cry like that and it's like to me that is just such a surreal way of parenting your your young

00:10:29.420 child to be doing this on tv to be like coaching them not to be a good dancer but coaching them to

00:10:36.280 like present their emotions on screen in a certain way totally i mean i think i think anyone who

00:10:42.600 watched dance moms knows that like the abby lee miller enterprise was kind of devilish i don't

00:10:51.320 know what kind of parent you have to be to put your child in that situation for profit i don't

00:10:56.660 know i don't know i feel like this genre like dance moms it is one step above toddlers and

00:11:03.300 tiaras it is the exact same culture that you see with the pageants but it's like given this slight

00:11:09.600 air of sophistication or like it's slightly less expletive because they're it's an art form because

00:11:14.860 they're dancing but in reality like the behavior and the mentality that is on display is exactly

00:11:20.720 the same as pageantry so jojo kind of garners this reputation on the show again as an 11 to 13

00:11:28.460 year old which is how old she was when she was on it for being like loud and sassy and she would be

00:11:33.960 reprimanded for this often i was watching old clips of jojo siwa on dance moms and it almost 1.00

00:11:40.380 sent like shock waves through my body because the way that she was reprimanded for the way that she

00:11:45.360 was behaving resonated so much to me as like something that was familiar as someone who grew 0.77

00:11:50.780 up like a little gay boy like you're doing too much like slap on the wrist like you're being too 0.77

00:11:55.920 too much too much too much and I think people trying to figuratively and then literally 0.99

00:12:02.340 straighten Jojo Siwa out has been a through line of her entire public facing career but there were

00:12:09.220 these compilations you know all over YouTube of like Jojo's rudest dance mom's moments it was

00:12:14.820 always like look at this spoiled little brat and i was watching it last night and i was like

00:12:18.000 this is just a small child being abused on tv i just want to play like one clip from that

00:12:25.740 she deserves nothing don't have an attitude that you are entitled in this world you are not

00:12:33.660 you deserve nothing else you earn it you can't stand here and cry i want no no no no no no crying

00:12:42.820 children not well if you yell at me i'm gonna cry get out go go she goes well if you yell at me i'm 1.00

00:12:52.740 gonna cry and that was framed as like this little bitch yeah so crazy it is really crazy and it's 0.99

00:13:00.400 like the message that is being like rammed in over and over and over and over again like what 0.99

00:13:05.620 people are repeatedly telling jojo siwa is you must behave over the top to be rewarded to get

00:13:12.040 attention to succeed. But at the same time, you will be punished for it. Like what people want

00:13:17.980 to see from you is they want to see you be humiliated. And so you must learn how to get

00:13:24.040 that specific type of attention. And I think that is also a through line in how she has presented

00:13:28.200 herself in adulthood as well. Something that is really interesting in the conversations that

00:13:32.740 swirl around Jojo Siwa is how she reflects on Dance Moms now and her relationship to Abby Lee

00:13:38.900 Miller now, which is a positive one, she says. She talks about Dance Moms as being an overall

00:13:46.260 positive experience, but also she'll say things like, you know, what Abby was doing was tough

00:13:51.120 love. She said in the Call Her Daddy interview, you know, well, that's just part of being an

00:13:56.440 athlete. You know, it just happened to be put on TV for everyone to see and scrutinize.

00:14:01.060 And she also said to James Charles, when James Charles did a makeover on her a few years ago,

00:14:06.240 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.

00:14:22.300 Yes. And it's interesting that she compares it to other types of athleticism and sports culture, because you see the exact same thing in any of these high achieving extracurricular programs. I remember when Netflix's Cheer came out several years ago, there was this big discussion of this coach is presented as a core support structure in these dancers' lives, these cheerleaders' lives.

00:14:46.820 but also people were like this coach is abusive and there was a big conversation where people

00:14:51.740 were like she's not abusive like tough love is so crucial for kids especially vulnerable kids

00:14:56.920 from like gay backgrounds like things literally things like that and it's like i think that is

00:15:01.860 such a persistent but a harmful message and it's not true like we see the outcomes of these

00:15:08.480 relationships that are abusive between coaches and teachers and students and it does not have

00:15:13.820 better outcomes than if they were not abusive. Totally. I mean, I'm heavily invested in the

00:15:19.540 gymnastics world. And that reminds me of like when Michaela Skinner, who is this like now like MAGA

00:15:27.360 Trump Republican Riley Gaines loving like anti Simone Biles, former gymnast from Simone Biles 0.95

00:15:32.740 Olympic team, maybe two Olympic cycles ago, she had this very controversial interview where she

00:15:37.580 was like, well, the gymnasts were just better when we had the Carolis who were, of course, 0.70

00:15:43.280 the abusive russian coaches who allowed you know larry nassar to fester as this like pedophile

00:15:48.740 doctor but that's also just not true the gymnasts weren't better than the gymnasts there's like safe

00:15:54.560 sport in place now and all of these rules and regulations that are there to prevent what

00:15:59.700 happened with the usa gymnastics scandal from happening again and they just won gold in the

00:16:04.560 most recent paris olympics so it's just not true yeah it's not true and it's like it's part of the

00:16:08.800 justification to enable and defend abusive behavior and it's often internalized by victims

00:16:14.500 of abusive behavior is like if you don't get justice a lot of times people will just choose

00:16:19.200 to rationalize what happened to them instead totally so the licensing of jojo siwa's name

00:16:25.680 and likeness happens very very quickly she debuts the bows as a 12 year old and if you don't know

00:16:35.800 what I'm talking about if you're watching this on YouTube I will throw a picture up on the screen

00:16:39.220 but on Dance Moms Jojo Siwa was known for these huge bows in her hair almost like early Madonna

00:16:45.580 esque bows for for the for the boomer gay men who listen to this podcast shout out to you

00:16:50.480 but she she begins selling these bows and they become so popular especially in the United Kingdom

00:16:59.360 that schools across the UK started to ban them for being a distraction.

00:17:05.380 Yes.

00:17:05.800 There was literally like a bullying subculture in the UK where girls, 1.00

00:17:10.040 because they're obviously expensive bows. 0.99

00:17:11.840 They're like branded bows with a celebrity face on them.

00:17:15.560 And it's like if your family couldn't afford to get you JoJo's bows,

00:17:19.020 there would be like a whole bullying thing that broke out, which is insane.

00:17:22.720 Do you know how many bows have been sold to date?

00:17:24.940 I don't.

00:17:25.980 I didn't put it in the outline because I didn't want you to see.

00:17:28.340 How many bows?

00:17:29.040 take one guess 200 million bows oh okay all right no wow jojo c was nothing to you

00:17:35.560 it is 90 million 90 million bows that's an insane number of bows

00:17:41.840 visualize 90 million bows in a room cat's like i could have sold more bows i could have i could 0.98

00:17:49.880 have gotten the 100 million well if they hadn't been banned in the schools then she would have

00:17:54.060 easily cleared 200 million bows. So she's selling millions and millions and millions of products,

00:18:01.400 you know, replicating her likeness as a 12 year old. And also in 2016, when she's a 12, 13 ish,

00:18:09.340 she releases her, I believe it was her debut song, Boomerang, the music video for which has

00:18:16.380 currently on YouTube over a billion views. Have you seen this? I have seen this. So Boomerang is

00:18:22.860 a song about it's like dealing with haters and cyber bullies i was watching this boomerang song

00:18:27.900 where she's just like dancing around you know this choreographed school set being like you know 0.98

00:18:32.260 basically like fuck the haters which like at this point she's a very famous child star she has many 0.98

00:18:37.520 but what's so interesting to me is like she can't even process like mass online harassment 0.99

00:18:43.640 like a normal child i mean i normal children don't even deal with that level of harassment

00:18:49.520 and his children but like she can't even process that without it being commodified and turned into

00:18:53.320 this billion view music video it just really and this is a through line through everything we're 0.95

00:18:59.420 going to talk about with her but she really has been living her entire life inside of a truman

00:19:05.400 show jojo came up in an era that was rough because not only was she experiencing this like

00:19:14.260 stratospheric mainstream traditional fame through reality tv through nickelodeon child stardom

00:19:21.980 she's also experiencing internet stardom at the exact same time and so it's like i think and she

00:19:28.840 has often been compared to and has compared herself to miley cyrus i think that is a pretty

00:19:34.100 apt comparison especially when you look at the amount of commodification of her young image but

00:19:40.120 it's also like at the time when these early Disney Channel stars were becoming the faces of teen

00:19:46.180 celebrity, social media was not yet what it was at the time when Jojo was coming up as a major

00:19:51.700 celebrity. So the way that I found out about Boomerang and really found out about Jojo was

00:19:57.340 through this lens of older content creators and adults who were adults who were like mocking her

00:20:04.560 and memeing her and it's very similar to what happened to like Rebecca Black with Friday

00:20:09.920 it's similar it reminds me of how people treated Justin Bieber when he was like a young boy it is

00:20:16.260 this like mockery and also I recall vividly like older YouTubers because she's becoming a massive

00:20:22.880 YouTube star simultaneously and I remember older YouTubers like trying to like figure her out

00:20:28.600 through this lens of like they're almost dehumanizing her they're like people are turning

00:20:33.680 her into an object and something to be critiqued on and not making space for the fact that she was

00:20:39.680 a real child and a real person and look i know if you tuned into this episode you're probably

00:20:45.100 waiting for the part where we talk about some of the less savory things that jojo siwa has said

00:20:51.600 the more questionable things that she said and done and we're gonna get to those but i wanted

00:20:56.780 to contextualize it like meaningfully in all of this other stuff that she's had to grown up inside

00:21:01.540 of because you know I feel like when we or someone we know behave in a certain way like we understand

00:21:09.060 that the way we behave is a product of all of our life experiences that shaped us into the person we

00:21:14.160 are today and when we talk about people we don't know and in this case public figures I feel like

00:21:19.900 oftentimes especially with like online commentary coverage all of that behavior you know for example

00:21:26.280 like jojo siwa like drinking vodka on stage while like humping the air or something is viewed in a

00:21:33.040 vacuum and this is so often the case and and it's the case with a lot of people we talk about on

00:21:37.980 this podcast and it's the case with like i don't know like demi lovato too like anytime anyone who

00:21:43.700 is an adult now who had like a super traumatizing often like really public childhood does something

00:21:48.000 like cringe or questionable or whatever they're just judged in the worst way but i'm like can we 0.91

00:21:54.000 talk about the time that that like person almost died you know it's shit like that yes 100 and it's

00:21:59.880 like even the most empathetic kind of portrayals of jojo at this age were still kind of like look 0.97

00:22:06.300 at how ridiculous her life is and her life was objectively very ridiculous like i remember

00:22:13.520 watching a video where the creator went to jojo siwa's house and it was like let's like walk 0.96

00:22:20.100 through her house and marvel at how absurd it is that this child's entire lived environment,

00:22:27.840 her home, is branded. And people might remember this because these videos would get tens of

00:22:33.020 millions of views. The inside of Jojo Siwa's family home where she actually lived was like

00:22:37.760 full of Jojo Siwa branded merchandise. The car was covered in her face. In the house there was

00:22:44.660 a merch closet where they had hundreds of different types of merchandise items that all

00:22:49.480 had her face on them. Her bedroom had like a slide, but also it was stuffed with like all

00:22:54.960 of her merchandise and all of her bows everywhere. Even her dog, even her dog was like part of the

00:23:00.380 merchandise and the TV show and the character of Jojo Siwa. And it's like, I can't even fathom

00:23:06.160 what that would do to someone to grow up like that. Yeah. And we're going to talk more about

00:23:11.720 the house and more about the family and the financials of it all in a moment. But I want

00:23:16.640 to keep going with our timeline uh so jojo's on dance moms for two years she starts this budding 1.00

00:23:22.360 branding empire with the help of her momager and i'm sure a lot of other adults around her

00:23:27.260 in 2017 as a 13 year old she is signed by nickelodeon and all of this stuff just explodes

00:23:35.160 a thousand fold so the merchandising empire is expanded through jc penny it includes bedding 0.95

00:23:42.220 dolls books anything you can imagine and this shit sells one thing that is really interesting 0.80

00:23:48.220 to me just as an aside is that a lot of people especially now who talk about jojo siwa because 0.95

00:23:54.620 i was watching a lot of people's videos and podcasts about jojo siwa when i was getting

00:23:59.440 ready to make this one people will be like who are jojo siwa's fans young girls and i don't even

00:24:05.820 being just young girls 10 years ago i have a niece who is nine years old and i was asking my

00:24:12.800 sister-in-law i was like who are like the big icons who are like the pop culture icons for like

00:24:17.640 a really really young child girl now she was like olivia rodrigo jojo siwa jojo siwa has had fans

00:24:25.340 millions and millions and millions of fans like people aren't selling out her arena tours ironically

00:24:30.060 like she has so many bands but anyway yeah well it's like that makes a lot of sense to me because

00:24:35.960 there's this book I read earlier this year called Disney High and it's a book about like the business

00:24:42.060 behind Disney Channel I'm I'm I am sure that you read that book Kat no you'll you'll never believe

00:24:51.100 this book that I was reading um but so it was about like specifically how Disney Channel became

00:24:56.700 this like empire of child stardom and merchandising and music and movies and tv and celebrity and that

00:25:03.800 was the early aughts when these major corporations controlled the airwaves they had much more of a

00:25:09.940 gatekeeper role into what children were doing with their spare time and what children's

00:25:14.460 entertainment was the moment in which jojo siwa exploded was this massive like fracturing um where

00:25:21.760 the traditional entertainment gatekeepers no longer could control social media, which became

00:25:26.740 the main platform by which youth culture was formed. And so Jojo Siwa was able to straddle

00:25:32.720 like both worlds at the same time, which I think made her into kind of almost like an incomparable

00:25:39.320 figure within this generation. Yes. And she dominates both. Wow, you segued me perfectly.

00:25:46.080 She dominates both the traditional airwaves. She gets put all over Nickelodeon programming 1.00

00:25:51.460 and she starts really really hustling at youtube and she grows her youtube channel to 12 million

00:25:58.600 subscribers while notably doing everything herself she was doing the creative the filming

00:26:03.280 the editing the posting etc all by herself there was a period of years where she was posting to

00:26:09.600 youtube 10 times a week wow so i'm sorry to the bit fruity listeners who think that i'm not working

00:26:18.180 As hard as Jojo Siwa, I'm trying my best.

00:26:22.740 It's like, when did she go to school?

00:26:25.060 Well, actually, was she homeschooled?

00:26:27.520 I don't even know.

00:26:28.280 I'm sure she was.

00:26:28.660 Almost certainly.

00:26:29.560 Almost certainly homeschooled.

00:26:31.240 It's so interesting.

00:26:32.200 I was reading everything about Jojo Siwa and school never comes up.

00:26:34.840 So I'm sure it was a homeschool situation.

00:26:37.420 She says of this time, quote, once I hit 13 years old, it was wake up, film, edit, upload,

00:26:44.100 sing, dance, record, post, sleep.

00:26:46.300 and it's like one of the sorry were you to say something no i actually it's i read that quote

00:26:52.500 and i had to process it for a second because it's i mean honestly that sounds a lot like my life now

00:26:58.080 but i'm 26 she was doing this at the same age like what were you doing when you were 13 i was doing

00:27:03.260 buzzfeed am i gay quiz right right you know i was like reading i was reading books

00:27:09.260 something i don't like i like i genuinely i don't even say it to make fun of them

00:27:14.880 i think that it is like so tragic that so many former child stars straight up did not receive

00:27:22.020 an education because it's like you look at like miley cyrus has talked about this miley cyrus's

00:27:27.560 daily schedule was like that because disney took unprecedented intrusion into her life

00:27:33.160 and they did not get the opportunity to be educated and i think that is so sad and it's

00:27:40.160 like I think that does play a role in how they acted later and it also is it's sad because it's

00:27:45.180 like of course I think some of these child stars when they're adults they struggle with tasks that

00:27:51.140 other people do not because they did not have the foundation into adulthood that most people do and

00:27:57.640 it is truly tragic to be sitting here on this like mountain of money more money than you could ever

00:28:03.580 know what to do with but not have the education to like necessarily live a life that is fulfilling

00:28:09.260 for you. I think that's so sad. I would like to take a quick break from the show to thank the

00:28:16.640 sponsor of today's episode, Factor. Lately, between doing this podcast and social media commentary and

00:28:23.680 keeping up with the news and trying to see my family, I haven't had a whole lot of free time.

00:28:28.600 And might I add, it's now summer in New York, the best time to be in New York. And with what free

00:28:34.280 time I do have, I want to get outside. I want to bike on the West Side Highway. I want to take a

00:28:39.360 nap in Central Park. Well, maybe not a full nap. Don't want anyone to steal my backpack, but like

00:28:45.240 a shut your eyes for 10 minutes without falling asleep kind of nap. You know what I mean. The

00:28:48.820 point is something that I really don't want to be doing is spending hours inside cooking or really

00:28:54.220 spending much of any time at all cooking for that matter, because I don't love cooking, but I do

00:28:58.640 love eating. And one thing that helps me get around that conundrum is Factor. Factor is a

00:29:04.980 meal delivery program with chef-made gourmet meals that make eating well easy. And the best part is

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00:30:00.100 this episode. And now let's get back to it. In 2019, Jojo Siwa, then age 15, 16, embarks on

00:30:11.680 the dream tour which is a an arena tour of guess how many shows 100 148 wow a 148 show arena tour

00:30:25.240 and at this point i would like to bring back up her family and kind of the financial situation

00:30:32.020 as jojo is still a child so her entire family her mom her dad and her brother have moved to la at

00:30:40.280 this point into a mansion that, of course, Jojo's money bought for them. And I say Jojo's money

00:30:46.040 bought for them because it isn't legally Jojo's money yet. You don't technically have access to

00:30:52.200 all of that money until you're 18. Do you know a little bit about the laws that are in place for

00:30:58.440 like child earners like that? I do. Because before the Coogan laws existed, it was possible for a

00:31:05.740 child, actor's legal guardian or parent to just take all of their money and spend all of it before

00:31:11.980 they even turn 18. And that unfortunately happened and created this precedent. And the passage of

00:31:17.900 this legislation required that particularly within these traditional entertainment environments,

00:31:24.500 children's parents would have to put aside a percentage like 15% of the money that they made

00:31:30.540 into a trust that couldn't be touched until that child turned 18.

00:31:35.620 Oh, interesting.

00:31:36.760 It did.

00:31:37.500 Wow, this is so interesting.

00:31:38.440 I just Googled it and learned that the Coogan Law protections have been extended to minors

00:31:42.000 featured in social media content effective January 1st, 2025.

00:31:45.460 So as of this year, as of January of this year, the Coogan Laws, which only reserve

00:31:51.660 15% of the money earned to the child, which is not very much percentage wise.

00:31:57.280 But as of this year, they apply to children on social media.

00:32:01.080 So needless to say, this was all happening way before that.

00:32:04.160 And even though the Coogan Laws applied to her Nickelodeon work, they were not applying

00:32:07.120 to her YouTube success, for example.

00:32:10.300 Yes.

00:32:10.600 And there are so many cases of YouTube family channels and YouTube child-focused channels

00:32:17.220 where children have since come out.

00:32:19.800 Because we're past a generation.

00:32:21.100 There's already been a generation of child YouTube stars.

00:32:23.440 The first generation had no protections.

00:32:25.000 It was the wild, wild, wild west.

00:32:27.060 even compared to the notoriously exploitative, like traditional children's stardom industry.

00:32:34.000 Right, right.

00:32:34.900 So one thing that Jojo mentioned in this Call Her Daddy interview that I honestly found so upsetting

00:32:42.140 was that her mom would express fear to her when she was a child,

00:32:47.060 that Jojo would cut them off financially once she turned 18.

00:32:50.960 And when Jojo was talking about the way that her mom would talk to her as a child,

00:32:55.060 she'd say like jojo if you saw someone on the street who needed your help you would do anything

00:33:00.880 to help them right and jojo was like yeah of course i would you know i would try to help anyone

00:33:04.840 and jessa lynn was like well if that's what you would do for a stranger what would you do for

00:33:09.180 people you love yeah i mean that's not good that's so manipulative and jojo says like you know no one

00:33:17.620 took advantage of me and she she's actually framed it seemingly in her mind she said like i i was so

00:33:23.420 happy that I got to take care of my family that I loved. And again, I'm not here to tell Jojo Siwa

00:33:30.080 how to feel about any of this. But I think it's safe to say it's an extremely bizarre dynamic.

00:33:36.420 Yes. And she's also admitted in interviews, she said there were times where she would just want

00:33:41.120 her mom to be her mom and not her manager. She also said that when she was 14, her mom would do

00:33:47.560 quote normal things like take my phone away. And instead of being upset about it, I'd be happy that

00:33:53.240 I could get the day off work wow that is so sad isn't that crazy that's so sad and it's like

00:34:01.140 I've heard actors like traditional celebrities talk about this and people have varying experiences

00:34:06.900 you have like the Jeanette McCurdy end of the spectrum and then you have people who talk about

00:34:11.640 how like the Zendaya side of the spectrum where it's like her parents more so at least the

00:34:15.980 perception is that they protected her from sort of like the darker side of this industry so it's

00:34:20.860 like there can be a lot of depth and nuance within these varied experiences but undoubtedly the

00:34:27.740 dynamic of having a child supporting their family that's not like normal that's not natural that's

00:34:35.120 not how the parent-child dynamic is supposed to function the one other thing that i think about

00:34:40.300 a lot from this era of jojo's life is something that she was made fun of for a lot is like in

00:34:46.000 these youtube videos she would talk really fast and really energetically and it was like people

00:34:51.660 would literally like mock this like it was a meme like jojo's juice yeah yeah that was because okay

00:34:57.440 yeah because i never saw her on dance mom so the first time i was ever exposed to jojo siwa

00:35:01.100 was through her youtube videos and it was like

00:35:03.140 it was fierce it was fierce but it was you know she was very much herself always and she was always

00:35:14.000 reprimanded for that yes and i also imagine that that sort of presentation is kind of a byproduct

00:35:21.080 of the environment she's in because it's like if you at age 13 14 15 have to wake up every morning

00:35:27.060 and do this pre-recorded segment for your youtube show of course you're going to do it like as fast

00:35:32.500 as possible like you want to get it out of the way you want to be done with it and also you have to

00:35:36.540 do so many things that day so it's like this frenetic like hyper energetic style of content

00:35:43.480 that she was doing people mocked her for it so much and that to me is also kind of sad because

00:35:48.460 I'm like well no child should be put in this position of having to do this routine daily

00:35:54.280 but that was her daily life and again it's like she talks about a lot of the childhood work

00:36:02.700 that she did now as like something that was empowering like you know people made fun of me

00:36:08.320 for looking like a child well into my teenage years but like I was you know behind the scenes

00:36:13.580 like in an office like working a very adult job making like more money than any of these people

00:36:17.880 making fun of me would ever see in their lifetimes and like I get all of that I get all of that but

00:36:22.960 I don't know I'm I'm of two minds because I'm always just like how much can a child consent

00:36:28.080 to labor yes and also there's this phenomenon that people talk about a lot where it's like

00:36:33.800 if you delay your adolescence or like when celebrities become famous they're like stuck

00:36:39.600 at that age and I imagine that there's a lot of pseudoscience that goes into this like belief

00:36:44.400 but like the facts are she didn't get to have a normal childhood and I imagine that that is

00:36:50.020 something that is going to impact her throughout her adulthood is that she was thrust into labor

00:36:55.060 at a very young age and I just think that like I think that's sad and I also think that it's like

00:37:01.440 she's never had a chance to truly relax or take a break from this kind of grind and you see that

00:37:08.240 even now the same as when she was 13 and like commodifying her own experience with being

00:37:13.820 cyber bullied by an entire world online into like a music video to get adsense money from like still

00:37:20.280 you see now whenever she has these trials and tribulations they are immediately turned into

00:37:25.800 a product so keeping it moving here while she was still at nickelodeon at age 17 jojo siwa

00:37:34.540 comes out as one of the girls she comes out as gay i remember it being kind of like a confusing

00:37:41.200 series of posts but she basically posted like this photo with her girlfriend at the time

00:37:46.180 and then people were like wait i think this is like her girlfriend and then she posted this 0.98

00:37:50.760 photo I think it said she was wearing a shirt that I think it said like best big gay gay big 0.99

00:37:55.920 sister ever or something yes I remember at the time I was like this is this is fucking fierce 0.97

00:38:02.580 oh a hundred percent I remember this era so vividly I remember it so vividly because it's 0.62

00:38:09.560 like I think especially as like a queer young adult it's like you feel almost like protective 0.86

00:38:16.680 of like queer celebrities who are younger than you in a very parasocial way it's not like a real

00:38:21.400 sense of protectiveness that comes from knowing them it's just like I was like this is so cool

00:38:25.900 and I want the best for her and I like I want to see her be supported and I just was like I thought

00:38:32.760 it was thrilling when she talks about this now she said that she woke up and the photo of her

00:38:37.060 and her girlfriend had 90,000 comments and she was like the first 200 were nice and I was so excited

00:38:44.220 and then the next 89,800 were horrific and you know it was all like she had an entire

00:38:51.360 country countries of parents being like I'm never letting my kids watch Nickelodeon again

00:38:58.440 yeah and I remember thinking about this like at the time and how much of a boundary breaking

00:39:04.320 moment this was because I was thinking about it for her in a personal sense in like parasocially

00:39:09.540 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.

00:39:24.120 None of them was allowed to come out as lesbian.

00:39:26.660 Even I think famously like Raven Simone was like not allowed to come out as a lesbian. 1.00

00:39:32.200 Right.

00:39:32.920 And so yeah, it just to me, it was such a huge sign of progress.

00:39:37.360 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.

00:39:50.460 A thousand percent.

00:39:52.040 And JoJo has had some, you know, I would say slip ups when maybe talking about her own grandiose, such as when she says she wants to invent a new genre called gay pop, which people basically lambasted her for, including notably Tegan and Sarah, who were like, we invented gay pop.

00:40:13.240 Yeah, yeah.

00:40:14.400 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.

00:40:34.400 and you mentioned like other child stars before her who were queer were not allowed to come out

00:40:39.740 jojo siwa as far as i can tell she was not allowed to come out by nickelodeon she did it seemingly

00:40:47.500 without consulting anyone which again you shouldn't obviously goes without saying you 0.93

00:40:52.000 shouldn't have to fucking consult producers and executives at a at a tv network to see if you can 0.98

00:40:58.380 be your authentic self as a 17 year old. But she, again, grew up under circumstances that 0.98

00:41:05.400 were not like yours and mine. And she said that after she came out, the president of Nickelodeon

00:41:11.220 called her and asked her what she was going to tell retail partners like Walmart, Amazon and

00:41:17.500 Target. That does not surprise me, but only because I read that book about Disney.

00:41:22.280 i'm like i it's it's so crazy no it is really crazy and i i i strongly recommend this book

00:41:33.640 i wasn't even planning on talking about this book but in disney high the journalist who wrote it

00:41:38.340 interviews people who worked at the disney corporation about these contracts that they

00:41:43.560 would have with people like miley cyrus and hillary duff and miley cyrus in particular

00:41:47.840 was put through the ringer with disney because miley cyrus had a lot of scandals when she was

00:41:53.360 an older teenager and when hannah montana was still airing and the company and she wasn't the 1.00

00:41:57.700 only one vanessa hudgens they these women would have their like intimate images leaked and they 1.00

00:42:02.520 were children they were girls these were like nude images of children that would get leaked

00:42:06.600 and the company would would make them apologize for taking those photos and this is how these

00:42:14.140 corporations like treat girls in particular is like you don't know what's going on behind the

00:42:18.620 scenes you assume that the company would be like supportive but in reality they're like bullying

00:42:23.980 these children at these corporations and they're like enforcing these regressive conservative in

00:42:30.380 many cases standards of behavior on them it reminds me of when i guess whoever was in charge

00:42:37.160 like jive records would have 17 year old britney spears do press conferences about how she was

00:42:42.900 waiting till marriage to have sex yes it's like yes that is exactly the kind of behavior and it's

00:42:50.960 still happening to this day and like anyone who has worked in these environments knows there is a

00:42:57.500 a corporate culture of um just like punishing particularly women and girls like girls who are

00:43:05.340 like 15 16 17 they are punished for the experiencing what happens to girls they're

00:43:11.880 punished for things that are not bad they're punished for things that are not their fault

00:43:17.120 when other people treat them with misogyny they are punished for that and and in the public sphere

00:43:23.520 they have to apologize publicly and like make it all okay for everybody even though they're

00:43:27.640 the victim in the situation exactly so jojo continues to like be out and she does things

00:43:36.100 to visually you know signify that she's out she cuts her hair she starts expressing herself

00:43:41.300 differently and this is kind of the point at which her relationship with Nickelodeon really

00:43:45.900 sours after she comes out she claims that Nickelodeon really kind of just like stopped

00:43:51.340 including her in their programming despite the fact that she was like one of the major faces

00:43:56.180 of their network she notably that year she wasn't invited to the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards

00:44:01.620 which she heavily implied through like tweets and stuff that she was like they don't want me there

00:44:07.020 because i'm gay i'm controversial now interestingly and this really stood out to me nickelodeon

00:44:11.340 released a statement about this where they're like we support her we wish her the best we're

00:44:16.620 not aware of the blackballing that she's talking about they wrote we have valued and supported

00:44:22.140 jojo throughout our incredibly successful partnership which included a jojo themed 0.95

00:44:27.100 pride collection at a major national retailer and it's just so crazy that like the retort 0.67

00:44:34.320 to them abandoning her is yet another like we sold gay things about her we sold her in in the 0.50

00:44:41.360 gateway too it's just everything comes back to like how have we commodified this person

00:44:46.020 yeah it's like how could we have exploited her we were exploiting her

00:44:50.120 exactly it's like i'm sorry it's not funny but it's it's it is it's crazy yeah and that's like

00:44:59.120 that is truly like how you see conservatism and capitalism are so inextricably linked because in

00:45:06.540 order to be as profitable as possible you cannot align yourself with movements that are like

00:45:12.540 boundary breaking or make anyone in your target demographic uncomfortable so she came out in 2021

00:45:18.660 as a 17 year old and the years since for jojo siwa i think have really been marred as we all know

00:45:24.900 with like a series of like highly publicized aesthetic choices that have been meant to signal

00:45:31.680 her transition into adulthood these have included releasing her song karma last year where like she

00:45:38.840 was basically in her typical like jojo siwa like glitter and paint all over the face sort of garb

00:45:44.100 but it was just black instead of rainbow which i really did appreciate how she was like this is me

00:45:49.640 changing. And it was just like the sparkles are like black sparkles now. Yes. Joja Siwa never

00:45:54.840 changed. She like drank from a handle of Tito's on stage at one of her performances. And the worst

00:46:02.620 crime that she really committed at this point was just like being cringe. And people would just pile

00:46:11.020 on. And if you're listening to this episode, I'm sure you had witnessed even from the outskirts,

00:46:17.040 some of those pylons and I have to say uh you can feel however you want about the art or music video 0.93

00:46:23.560 or song that anyone puts out but intellectually speaking some of these pylons got really dumb 0.99

00:46:29.380 like for example when she put out karma like karma's a bitch I should have known better hey 0.96

00:46:35.520 I can't sing either you know but um people people had revealed that like the song was written by 0.90

00:46:41.900 someone else as many pop songs are and then the rights of the song was purchased by jojo siwa so

00:46:47.980 she could perform it and people were like so not only does the song suck but she also stole it from

00:46:54.740 someone else and i'm like that's how music works yeah buy the rights from the songwriter 0.97

00:47:00.740 like it was so dumb famously the opposite of stealing is when you buy something from someone

00:47:06.760 Yes. People were like, she copied this lady who wrote the song. I'm like, no, the lady who wrote 0.97

00:47:13.320 the song was paid for it by a one Jojo Siwa. She wrote it because that's her job. Her job is to

00:47:21.480 write things for people to buy. If Jojo didn't buy it, someone else would have hopefully so that

00:47:26.660 she could afford rent. I think that like when you see Jojo doing these things on stage where she's

00:47:32.160 like chugging the handle of vodka or whatever it's not surprising and it goes right back to

00:47:37.900 what I was saying about how like she never got a chance to live a real childhood she also did not

00:47:43.500 get a chance to live a real adolescence her image her commodified image was of a little girl and

00:47:51.020 therefore up until the moment where she like severed those ties with Nickelodeon she had to

00:47:55.860 project innocence she had to project girlishness she had to be marketable in the exact same vein

00:48:02.780 of hitting that target demo of young girls and their parents and so she was not allowed to be

00:48:08.720 a normal teenager and like not to keep comparing her to Miley Cyrus but I think the comparison is

00:48:14.140 so apt because when Miley who was presented in the exact same way when she would do things that

00:48:19.580 a normal teenager would do when she got a finger tattoo when she tried drugs when she would go to

00:48:24.500 parties it became an international global scandal and she was punished by everyone for doing it

00:48:32.280 and jojo actually waited until she was an adult to do these things but she was still punished by

00:48:37.800 everyone for it and it's like she's lived her entire life period in the spotlight so it's like

00:48:44.220 it comes naturally to her to show this transition in the spotlight and to try to separate her

00:48:49.480 adulthood from her like childlike commodified image and it's like of course she was punished

00:48:55.460 for doing that and of course she was treated in a way that has these undeniable contours of

00:49:01.120 misogyny versus like if a male teenage celebrity unfurls like a rocker look and we've literally

00:49:08.180 I've literally watched this happen with tiktokers like male tiktokers will do things like this

00:49:12.620 not even comparable the level of scrutiny the level of mockery the level of attention

00:49:18.660 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

00:49:23.660 woman and a young queer woman on top of that my camera just heated up so i'm gonna put in 0.92

00:49:28.980 the fridge for a second as you know this is what i do now when my uh when my camera gets too hot 1.00

00:49:34.440 and i'm gonna run to the bathroom and we'll be right back i wanted to take a quick break

00:49:39.820 from this episode to thank blueland for sponsoring today's show

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00:51:32.180 the show and now let's get back to it what i want to add to when it comes to like people's reaction

00:51:41.220 to jojo siwa being jojo siwa as of late on the internet people will be like oh like she's

00:51:48.160 obviously like you know dressing up like an adult toddler while drinking from a handle of vodka 0.74

00:51:52.620 on stage like that that's a ploy for attention online like she wants our opinions about this

00:51:58.600 to be posted to be shared and like is there a validity to that maybe no probably also I'll say

00:52:06.100 it's a solid probably and also is getting eyes on the screen the sole way that this person has been

00:52:14.900 taught to value themselves from age nine yes and so like I know asking people on the internet to

00:52:24.340 be mindful of the way that they approach visuals like this when they see again like adult toddler

00:52:30.240 drinking vodka in front of an arena of people when asking people to be mindful and meaningful

00:52:35.100 when it comes to reacting to stuff like that is like trying to push a boulder uphill i get it but

00:52:39.080 like what is this podcast for if not being a little bit hopeful about the way that we can

00:52:43.040 treat each other you know and it also is like whenever someone like miley cyrus comes out a

00:52:48.880 decade later and is like my schedule at nickelodeon was like this and this is what this is how people

00:52:55.100 treated me in the public eye when i was this age people are like people are so awful like why why

00:53:01.480 do we treat child stars this way like we should stop doing that and then they do the exact same

00:53:06.840 thing every time yep yep people are very good at i was literally just saying this to my to my

00:53:13.480 boyfriend i was like people are so good at being like oh what we did to britney we should never do 1.00

00:53:19.080 that again anyway jojo siwa is a threat to society and she's corrupting like you know it's it's 0.99

00:53:25.080 ridiculous but but it's also like admittedly it when you see that pop crave tweet about jojo siwa

00:53:30.620 and it has 10 000 quote tweets and everyone's dunking on it everyone's having fun i understand

00:53:35.260 that as as as a netizen myself it can be hard to stop yourself in the moment from piling on and

00:53:42.140 that's i don't know that's kind of what we have to do though yeah especially when someone says

00:53:45.940 something that's like not necessarily true like when jojo is like oh i'm inventing gay pop

00:53:51.340 it's really hard to like hold your tongue because it's like well that's obviously not true and i

00:53:56.720 don't think that everyone should like silence themselves from like critiquing jojo siwa or

00:54:01.400 anyone's behavior but rather like consider that for her lived experience as an individual human

00:54:08.340 being every day like imagine what her life is like searching her own name imagine like all of

00:54:15.160 this content just becomes this like miasma of like good faith criticism mostly bad faith criticism

00:54:20.840 mostly like mocking you making fun of you bullying you it's like it's hard to see the forest for the

00:54:26.780 trees and I think that people also don't really want to take any sort of responsibility or

00:54:32.440 accountability for the very real phenomenon that our individual online behavior has real

00:54:38.480 consequential effect. Even when that person you're talking about is rich, even when the person who

00:54:43.260 you're talking about is a celebrity, we're all on the same internet and people want to act like

00:54:47.720 it's not real. And the things that they say will never reach that person or have any consequence

00:54:51.920 on that person. What I really think that it actually does. Jojo Siwa's relationship with

00:54:58.080 her own sexuality has been a huge point of discussion and yes we are getting to it this is

00:55:03.620 what you came for folks but she has sort of allowed us to peer in to her own struggle with

00:55:12.520 her relationship with lesbian identity with queer identity and something that people will bring up a

00:55:19.020 lot was this like zoom interview that she did one time where she said that she didn't like the sound

00:55:25.160 of the word lesbian and she was like i don't like the word itself it just like lesbian it's just like

00:55:33.740 a lot but 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

00:55:39.540 word moist it's just like so it wasn't like she's like i hate lesbians it was like i don't like the

00:55:46.320 word that being said i think it's fair to uh understand this and some of the other things

00:55:52.100 that she will do and say about queer identities as just like internalized homophobia. 0.99

00:55:56.680 Yeah, I think that's fair. 0.99

00:55:57.980 And I also, I find that to be so relatable.

00:56:01.080 When I was her age, I felt the exact same way about the word lesbian.

00:56:05.880 And I'm sure I said that to people and had that said to me.

00:56:09.560 I think a lot of people also forget that like when you're growing up gay, whether you are

00:56:13.980 a celebrity or whether you are a girl next door, people will say these things to you.

00:56:19.100 people said to me when I was a teenager that the word lesbian grossed them out so it's like where

00:56:24.480 that internalized homophobia comes from is like it is you trying to normalize and rationalize

00:56:31.080 the homophobia that is externalized that you face and it's you trying to come to terms with that

00:56:36.740 and like particularly like I think back to my experience when I was Jojo's age and like coming

00:56:41.900 into my sexuality that was like one of the as it is for many queer people that was one of the

00:56:46.860 hardest, most confusing times of my life. There were a lot of days when I didn't quite know who 0.95

00:56:51.680 I was or how to explain it to myself and others. And so I have so much empathy for what she's

00:56:59.380 going through. I cannot even fathom. It's like a nightmare to imagine doing all of that in the

00:57:05.020 public eye with this level of scrutiny. Yeah. And I'm look, I'm a gay man. I'm obviously not

00:57:10.580 a lesbian. And I'm certainly not here to tell any lesbians online, young lesbians who might

00:57:16.460 look up to or look alongside Jojo Siwa as someone who represents them, which is very obviously not

00:57:21.560 enough, very visible lesbian representation. So I also understand why a disproportionate amount

00:57:27.280 gets put on someone like her. But, you know, I really do understand where people say, you know,

00:57:32.220 yes, this is an internalized homophobia, but it's kind of on you to work that out before you're on

00:57:36.220 camera. And I agree with that. And then I also think she doesn't really, and hasn't since she

00:57:42.900 was nine like had a real life off camera everything has been worked out online yes i think that is so

00:57:49.500 huge is like we're still kind of catching up our understanding of just how much this technology

00:57:55.080 has changed all of our lives let alone people who live these like influencer lifestyles where it's

00:58:00.720 like truly the amount of your life the percentage of your life that's not public is slim and i think

00:58:08.960 that it's like we still have to hold people accountable whether they're in the public eye or

00:58:12.840 not but we can also like realize like the actual context for these things and like the conditions

00:58:19.920 that produce these things one thing i will add before we keep going with this timeline is that

00:58:25.100 like there is obviously discussion that i've seen from lesbians online about the things that jojo

00:58:30.820 siwa says about like for example the word lesbian or whether or not she has she identifies with the

00:58:36.480 lesbian label and obviously i'm not here to police any lesbians feelings about any of this uh but

00:58:42.280 what i will say is all of this stuff gets amplified a lot by people who are not lesbians and have no

00:58:49.840 stake in the well-being of queer people generally like when i was putting together notes for this

00:58:55.860 episode there was so much commentary on jojo siwa from heterosexual men who ultimately really just

00:59:03.780 wanted to talk about how jojo siwa's cringe and look at her but then they'll throw in a like and

00:59:09.280 this is what she's done to the lesbian community so as to make it a sort of moral grandstand when 0.96

00:59:13.760 the thing that we really want to talk about is like look at jojo siwa's weird face paint a million 0.69

00:59:18.300 percent you know what i mean yes yes and it's also like it's such an easy opportunity to like 0.57

00:59:23.560 redefine who is and who isn't like a good queer when it's like when that power is being taken

00:59:30.700 by like people who aren't even a part of the community it's like it makes me feel very uneasy 0.76

00:59:35.960 because of course heterosexual people are going to define what is acceptable and valid in the

00:59:41.920 queer community in their own heterosexual image which is not to comment on any specific behavior

00:59:47.000 jojo siwa has done or anything she specifically said but just like any conversation about queer

00:59:53.340 identity and what it represents and how public figures represent it leaves a bad taste in my

00:59:57.940 mouth when it's coming from people outside the community I had a note in this outline about

01:00:01.580 Jojo Siwa's relationships with other women uh which have been very publicized through TikTok

01:00:07.400 which I am not on so I'm I'm gonna yield to Kat I'm also just like not a this is the fourth time

01:00:16.020 I said I'm not a lesbian in like the last six minutes I'm not a lesbian but um you know I'm

01:00:26.020 not a lesbian i'm not on tiktok i'm not really uh attuned to the sort of lesbian famous lesbian

01:00:33.620 relationship drama on tiktok that's really not my area of expertise so i yield to you so basically

01:00:39.380 i was following along with this pretty closely in the beginning because i was following along

01:00:43.700 with the jojo siwa coming out journey very closely and as previously mentioned she came out within

01:00:50.200 this relationship she came out because she was dating a girl and the way that she met this girl

01:00:56.640 is like jojo and her family went on a cruise and i believe it was a disney cruise and they like

01:01:03.080 jojo it's it's cat bait it's cat bait it was cat bait and it's like she met this girl who was

01:01:10.240 literally just like a normal person she was not a celebrity she had no relationship to being a

01:01:17.640 public figure until her young lesbian relationship with Jojo Siwa is like publicized to the world 0.82

01:01:25.620 and becomes international top breaking news and like that is such an unhealthy thing to happen to

01:01:33.140 anyone and it also establishes like a dynamic between Jojo and this woman she's now a woman

01:01:39.360 Kylie Pru and it's like she still has this leftover social media following from this like

01:01:45.060 brief relationship with jojo siwa it will follow her for the rest of her life from when they were

01:01:49.780 both children from when they were both children like when you google her name for the rest of

01:01:54.140 her life it will this will always follow her this will always be a shadow on her and i think that's

01:01:59.380 so unfair like who wants their relationship when they were like 18 19 or younger to follow them

01:02:06.380 and be the one thing that most people know about them like that sounds like hell it's like sam the

01:02:11.380 waiter from seattle it sure is shout out my sister he's always going to be sorry i don't know

01:02:17.280 i can't cat and i can't talk an hour without some form of my sister coming up but yeah it's

01:02:22.920 sam the waiter is always going to be sam the waiter at least at least to me exactly and like

01:02:27.720 i i find that so unfair for both of them on an individual level and it's also like

01:02:33.120 a very difficult i can only imagine way to be in a relationship especially at a young age like to

01:02:40.060 be in a relationship like that yeah on the public eye that's the case for uh like heterosexual young

01:02:46.140 teenage couples in the public eye being queer being in a lesbian relationship on top of that 0.51

01:02:51.520 it adds a further layer of complexity and their relationship is like splashed all over the place 0.83

01:02:57.020 after this like after their relationship ends they break up jojo goes on to date like other people

01:03:03.400 of varying degrees of being a public figure. And in 2023, Jojo made a TikTok where in the TikTok,

01:03:12.380 she's basically insinuating that in her relationships, there was love bombing and

01:03:18.000 clout chasing and that young women were dating her for clout. And she made that TikTok. And then 0.99

01:03:24.260 one of her recent ex-partners made a TikTok response where she said that Jojo was directing

01:03:32.480 a lot of her hate and harassment their way and she also said that like Jojo was like very hot

01:03:38.400 and cold in the relationship and like all of these details that I honestly don't even want to know

01:03:43.760 because it's like there were allegations of toxicity in the relationship but it's also like

01:03:50.160 stuff that is hard to parse and that I don't even necessarily want to parse it just is like it's so

01:03:55.700 intimate with these people who are so young I think the one thing that's important to note

01:04:00.140 about it is like you have two things going on here you have like a power dynamic where Jojo's

01:04:05.220 obviously more famous and this is something that her partner her former partner like pointed out

01:04:10.280 is like you have all the power in these relationships you have the platform in these

01:04:14.280 relationships and I think that is an important dynamic to point out because it's like whenever

01:04:18.400 there's a power dynamic it's something that can be exploited and the other thing that I think is

01:04:23.400 so crucial to understand here is like with jojo's knowledge but outside of her direct control

01:04:30.300 there's all of this like harassment that is coming these young women's way after these breakups and

01:04:37.000 i think it's totally fair to call jojo out like you're directing harassment like you're now like

01:04:41.500 doing something that you know is going to result in harassment it's also just like without necessarily

01:04:46.580 jojo's control this is the environment that's created around these relationships is you have

01:04:51.460 all this public interest and you have these very young people who are going to be like sending

01:04:56.720 these young women messages like forever. And I think that is also just such an unfortunate

01:05:01.700 byproduct of like digital young celebrity. And it is just such an unfortunate dynamic to add

01:05:08.960 into like the messiness of these like young relationships. I'm trying to think if I have

01:05:13.640 anything to add, but like, I really don't have, first of all, that was extremely astute. And

01:05:18.000 second of all like I don't really have a desire to comment again on like 18 year old lesbian

01:05:22.980 relationships I don't know if I've mentioned in this uh in this episode but I'm not a lesbian

01:05:26.980 um and I'm also like 26 right no it already feels like such a world away from like what it's like

01:05:36.200 to be that age and in relationships at that age yeah and and like I would go so far as to say

01:05:41.640 that like probably a lot of other people

01:05:44.420 should be like way less invested

01:05:46.560 in very young people's celebrity relationships

01:05:49.860 than they are.

01:05:50.960 That's just like my two cents on that.

01:05:53.100 Yeah.

01:05:53.460 And also like regardless of where these relationships fall,

01:05:57.620 there's nothing that public participation in them

01:05:59.620 can make it better.

01:06:01.140 Like we don't really know what's happening

01:06:03.140 in these relationships.

01:06:04.600 And us knowing more and us participating in this 1.00

01:06:08.380 and us driving harassment toward these young women,

01:06:11.020 that's not going to help anyone should we talk about big brother yes okay so very very recently

01:06:18.360 jojo who is now 22 years old uh goes on a reality competition show called big brother

01:06:25.860 before we started recording i was like kat do you know what like the basic premise of the

01:06:32.920 competition of big brother is because i don't i've never watched it and she was like no

01:06:38.000 i was like let me pull up the big brother wiki like the fandom wiki

01:06:44.680 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

01:06:52.080 some people are gonna watch this and be like i love big brother i mean you know good for you but

01:06:56.260 i i don't know the glimpses that i always catch from big brother it's like okay it's a bunch of

01:07:01.600 like celebrities living in a house and like trisha paytas is like probably there or something

01:07:06.640 what i do know about big brother is like the name big brother is a callback to like orwell

01:07:13.840 like big brother is always watching because i do know that like the concept of the show is rooted

01:07:18.880 in this idea of it being like a social experiment and it started out with like normal people and

01:07:25.320 like part of the gimmick is that they're in a house and there's cameras everywhere and they're

01:07:30.500 being watched in these cameras at all times and as viewers of the show you can like pay to get

01:07:38.580 more footage than what is just in the show you can like opt into seeing these like 24 7 live streams

01:07:45.440 and there are like discussion forums about like what people are doing at all times of the day

01:07:50.460 in the big brother house yeah it does seem like a big part of the what drives this show as is the 0.59

01:07:56.900 case with so many reality shows is just like let's drive these people completely fucking insane and

01:08:02.120 like see how they do under those conditions yes and matt i feel like we have a similar perspective

01:08:07.880 on this which is like i i don't condemn all reality tv it just it all makes me so uncomfortable

01:08:15.940 and i feel so bad i feel so bad for people who are on reality tv i was talking to someone recently

01:08:23.680 who is a former RuPaul's Drag Race girl.

01:08:27.340 I guess if you're a RuPaul's Drag Race girl, 0.68

01:08:29.660 you're forever a RuPaul's Drag Race girl.

01:08:31.340 Anyway, they were telling me like, you know,

01:08:34.620 with all the filming time that they would sleep

01:08:36.860 like between four and six hours a night.

01:08:38.640 And I'm like, oh, that's why you're all on edge all the time.

01:08:42.240 Yeah.

01:08:42.760 But anyway, JoJo goes on Big Brother.

01:08:47.100 Notably in the background here,

01:08:48.800 she is in a relationship with someone,

01:08:50.800 a non-binary kind of micro-influencer, I would say, who's not on the show with Jojo.

01:08:58.080 And as someone who doesn't watch Big Brother and who at this point wasn't paying a ton of

01:09:03.420 attention to Jojo Siwa, the first headlines that I got out of this were about Mickey Rourke,

01:09:09.260 her 72-year-old castmate, saying something really, really, really, really homophobic and

01:09:15.180 violent to her. Do you remember this? I do remember this. I don't remember exactly what

01:09:19.560 he said. But I remember being like, that's really bad. What he said was an honest content warning

01:09:25.220 for lesbophobic, violent language. Skip forward 15 seconds if you want. Mickey Rourke asked Jojo 0.98

01:09:33.100 regarding her relationship with a non-binary person. He said, do you like girls or boys?

01:09:38.980 And then he followed that up with, if I stay on the show longer than four days, you won't be gay 0.98

01:09:44.180 anymore which is i think most people understood to just be like a threat of corrective rape yeah 0.77

01:09:51.020 i mean i think this is something that i've experienced in like real life from men this

01:09:56.440 is something that is like a very common trope of an experience that you will have as a queer woman

01:10:01.000 like any kind of queer woman will experience this because it's like with men with heterosexual men 0.89

01:10:07.380 it's like they want to exert dominance over you and subjugate you by demeaning and undermining 0.92

01:10:14.920 your sexuality and basically saying like, well, I have the power over you. And so I'm going to

01:10:21.280 express that by making these kinds of like veiled threats. And it runs the gamut. It runs the gamut

01:10:26.920 from being like, oh, I'm going to be your boyfriend, which is the same thing in just like 0.98

01:10:30.620 nicer language to like I am going to like rape you and sometimes they will say just exactly that 0.90

01:10:37.800 and sometimes they will just say like oh well we're gonna hook up or you would hook up with me 0.99

01:10:41.500 or something like that and it is very violent and it is very dehumanizing and it is all too common

01:10:47.200 like I imagine that probably most queer women have had an experience like this yeah yeah and so on

01:10:54.320 the show jojo is kind of like dude like you can't fucking say that and it's clearly uh makes her

01:11:01.720 really uncomfortable and upset and she is most immediately comforted by her castmate 0.80

01:11:06.900 english television personality 10 years her senior 32 years old chris hughes jojo siwa and chris

01:11:15.020 hughes spend the rest of the season basically like flirting with each other on screen and this leads

01:11:22.720 to allegations against jojo siwa of emotionally cheating on her partner who was you know waiting

01:11:29.800 for her at home watching this unfurl on tv after the filming of the season was done jojo's partner

01:11:36.520 flew out to come to the after party for like i think like the premiere the screening or whatever

01:11:40.960 for the show and it was at that after party that jojo broke up with them you know presumably to

01:11:46.280 then go on and be in a relationship with chris hughes which we'll talk about like the how that

01:11:51.120 factors into her sexuality and lesbian identity and stuff in a second but a lot of people will

01:11:56.400 talk about this as like again it's like anytime a public figure does something shitty it like

01:12:02.400 always becomes talked about like murder i think this is like an undeniably shitty thing to do to

01:12:08.060 a partner like nobody wants to like say like goodbye sweetheart and then go and watch as

01:12:12.620 their like partner cheats on them on tv and then be dumped at the after party like that is a horrible

01:12:18.360 thing and it's also like an interpersonal conflict yeah yeah and it's also like the whole situation

01:12:24.860 is so bizarre and not normal like this is not something that would normally happen this is a

01:12:32.020 manufactured literal social experiment run on jojo siwa and these other people and like this

01:12:38.700 is what happened as a result of those unnatural artificial conditions which is not to say that

01:12:44.040 jojo had no autonomy but rather just to say like this is a weird progression of events it's really

01:12:50.080 weird the way that this all unfolded and like this isn't how normal life works yes and again

01:12:57.720 because people are going to be like what are you are you making cheater apologia and again it's like

01:13:04.720 no but i think that the i'm going to hearken back to what you said uh earlier in this episode which

01:13:12.480 is that like i don't think public participation benefits anybody involved it doesn't because it's

01:13:18.160 like if you had empathy for these people you would want them to be left alone but what we instead see

01:13:23.380 is we see this like vultures circling like this drama and it's like that in itself is like it's

01:13:30.560 funny to me how the behavior of the public figure is always crucified but the behavior of the viewer

01:13:36.520 is treated as this like morally neutral thing when in reality it's like caring this much about

01:13:42.620 like interpersonal conflict and like leering at it and like treating it this way that's also not

01:13:48.460 like a morally like righteous thing to do yeah one other thing i want to note about big brother

01:13:54.500 before we get into like sexuality labels and stuff that people also get really invested in

01:13:59.000 when it comes to jojo siwa understandably to a certain extent give me a minute but um another

01:14:04.220 thing that happens during the big brother season is that jojo siwa while sitting kind of cradled

01:14:09.280 by chris hughes confesses to big brother the you know plastic light up eye that they have to

01:14:15.960 confess secrets to in the show that she is having this like very complex questioning of her own

01:14:23.020 gender and she talks about really relating to the people in her life who are non-binary and it's so

01:14:29.500 crazy because she's saying this to the literal like big brother eye on the show but again this

01:14:36.280 is jojo siwa's entire life yes not to be like too like annoying and like quippy about this but like

01:14:43.420 when it comes to jojo siwa like we are big brother like we are all watching her like it's the truman

01:14:51.100 show from the time she was nine yeah this is just how her life has always been and it's like so

01:14:56.800 unhealthy and when you and i were talking about it yesterday kat you described her entire life

01:15:02.040 as like experimental yes like i was just thinking like big brother is a social experiment and like

01:15:07.900 the conditions of big brother are not natural they're artificial and that also that describes

01:15:12.140 her entire life like from the time that she could form memories probably like her whole life is this

01:15:18.260 like unnatural not normal not real like it's a surreal life to experience yeah yeah obviously

01:15:26.740 once she officially defines her relationship with chris hughes after the show people are like i

01:15:32.340 thought you were a lesbian and jojo siwa says a few things uh none of which are worded well

01:15:37.600 and we'll talk about them a little bit so she says i've always told myself i'm a lesbian and

01:15:44.500 i think being here i've realized oh i'm not a lesbian i'm queer and i think that's really cool

01:15:49.740 she also on a whim when she was being filmed still on the show she said i'm switching letters

01:15:55.880 fuck the L, I'm going to the Q. In another interview she gave more recently, she said,

01:16:01.640 when I came out at 17, I said, I'm pansexual because I don't care about gender. But then I

01:16:07.400 kind of boxed myself in and I said, I'm a lesbian. And I think I did that because of pressure.

01:16:12.160 She noted that she felt the pressure came, quote, in a weird way from inside the LGBTQ community at

01:16:18.160 times. From people I know, from partners I've had, said Siwa, you just get put in this world where

01:16:24.020 you feel like because you now have said, oh, I'm a lesbian. You have to be a lesbian. And the truth 0.59

01:16:29.100 is sexuality is fluid. Would you like to take it away on this one? Yeah. I mean, I think that like

01:16:36.060 she's describing this in a way that I can see why people take a lot of issue with various things

01:16:41.000 that she's saying. I also think that what she's experiencing and what she's talking about is

01:16:46.020 really normal. And people have a lot of very confusing, oftentimes very personal feelings

01:16:52.360 mixed up with this type of thing and I can really empathize with what Jojo is talking about and I

01:16:58.560 can also empathize with people who would be upset by it because it's like from my own personal

01:17:03.440 experience the relationships that I had with other girls and women in this age range a lot of my

01:17:11.580 former partners when we were together they'd be like oh I'm gay or like maybe they would say

01:17:16.640 they're bi and then maybe they'd say they're actually gay and maybe they would talk about

01:17:19.920 like not knowing exactly what they were and then later on they would date and marry men and I like

01:17:27.220 I can really relate to this through both sides of it where it's like I have felt feelings of

01:17:32.340 betrayal that are almost hard to quite place when like things like that have happened and I also

01:17:37.680 think that like it makes a lot of sense to me and I do believe that sexuality is fluid and we've

01:17:43.780 also seen this explored more in pop culture I think about the song good luck babe which is like

01:17:48.880 chapel rone song written from the perspective of like i dated this girl when we were young

01:17:53.300 she didn't want to be out now she's with a man good luck babe like this literally one of the top

01:17:59.500 songs of the year when it came out obviously this is a big conversation that people are having and

01:18:03.980 i think there's so much nuance within it but i do i do not hold it against jojo siwa nor do i think

01:18:10.600 that she is dishonest or unethical for like dating women identifying as a lesbian and then being like

01:18:17.220 actually, I'm not a lesbian. I boxed myself in. I am going to date men. And the final layer of

01:18:24.840 nuance is like, I also think that she still might not have everything figured out yet. And the

01:18:30.360 conditions in which she met this guy are that she was reacting to this like violent homophobic thing

01:18:36.340 that happened to her. I am not in her head. So I can't piece together like what's going on here

01:18:42.460 with that perspective I just think like I want to give her extend her a lot of grace in figuring

01:18:48.020 this out because she's going through things that I can't even imagine and she's also going through

01:18:53.620 things that I know very well and that within that messiness like I I don't want her to be

01:18:59.940 penalized for going through something that is very human and actually very common yeah that 0.99

01:19:07.380 obviously I can't speak to the lesbian uh experience portion of this because I don't

01:19:11.980 know if i've mentioned in this episode but i'm not a lesbian um but you know obviously externalizing

01:19:20.300 the the pressure to identify as a lesbian versus like sexual fluidity both make sense and can feel

01:19:27.360 to someone reading that especially a young lesbian viewer like wait why are you pinning this on me

01:19:32.480 like i i can really understand why everyone feels the way that they do when quotes like this come 0.99

01:19:37.520 out also i will not pretend that there's anything graceful about the quote fuck the l i'm going to 0.59

01:19:42.820 the q i'm not here to white knight on behalf of those statements uh but you know what i will say 0.98

01:19:48.220 when it comes to her feeling like she had to identify you know straightforwardly as a lesbian 1.00

01:19:55.320 when she came out is just from the angle of this is someone again who from the time she was nine

01:20:02.960 has had to neatly package every part of her identity into something that people could very

01:20:07.940 quickly understand and buy into and i see this through that lens as just like very neatly in

01:20:16.220 line with like everything else that she's always done and felt like she's had to do to sell herself

01:20:21.280 to the masses like especially when like most people don't understand sexual fluidity yes and

01:20:28.240 Most people don't accept sexual fluidity. 0.56

01:20:31.500 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.

01:20:38.040 That's pressure that she may have felt was put onto her that ultimately she was putting on herself to a certain extent.

01:20:44.120 But again, I just think all of it is like sad.

01:20:47.060 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.

01:20:56.740 Absolutely.

01:20:57.260 this is all such new territory like this is stuff that lesbians have experienced over the course of

01:21:04.520 generations throughout our history but it's also like the conditions of being a lesbian today

01:21:09.400 are different than they were 10 years ago and something that I think is still not very well

01:21:15.160 understood like something that I learned about as a teenager to help me kind of try to work through

01:21:20.240 what I was feeling with my sexuality was like learning about compulsory heterosexuality and

01:21:26.100 then trying to figure out like are my feelings real are they inspired by my environment by the

01:21:32.220 culture that I live in is this connected to like abusive things that people have said and done to

01:21:36.880 me is this connected to like feeling betrayed after a breakup like it's it's complicated and

01:21:42.760 very messy and very nuanced and sometimes like you act in a way or you are confused in a way

01:21:49.200 because of multiple things and I think that also probably plays into what's happening with Jojo

01:21:53.940 is like we've identified all of these different factors

01:21:56.860 that could be playing into like her just trying to figure herself out 0.99

01:22:01.040 on this public stage.

01:22:02.420 The last portion of our episode is in the theme of branding

01:22:07.660 devoted to Jojo Siwa's what they're calling her latest rebrand.

01:22:12.620 So Jojo Siwa, now in a relationship with Chris Hughes,

01:22:17.060 debuted this very, very new look for her

01:22:20.300 in this cover that she released of her singing Bette Davis Eyes.

01:22:24.560 She did so along some visuals of her wearing this almost,

01:22:28.700 it's kind of like an over-the-top, like, 1960s housewife kind of look. 0.99

01:22:34.700 She has, like, the really heavy clown blush on.

01:22:37.940 She has this, like, it's very campy to me, honestly.

01:22:43.100 Yeah.

01:22:43.620 She has these, like, fake pearls, you know, the red lip.

01:22:48.060 and you know she's she's posted a bunch of of photos and videos of her in this in this style

01:22:55.980 people are you know people who are listening to this podcast are very upset about it and uh and

01:23:02.500 and sort of attributing it to some sinister implications of like the cultural tide of

01:23:07.360 conservatism what did you make when you saw this i just think that like when i look at everything

01:23:14.300 that's unfolded with jojo over the past few months including this i feel like she not that

01:23:19.920 she's crashing out but rather i'm just like she seems to be doing a lot of different things in

01:23:25.160 the public eye to provoke some sort of reaction out of people and that is something that she has

01:23:32.320 always done it's something that she was literally like groomed and trained to do

01:23:37.320 is like as we were talking about at the beginning she has been taught ever since she was a very

01:23:41.640 young girl you must provoke a reaction and that reaction will be detrimental to you it will be

01:23:47.580 people getting mad at you and you have to keep doing that because that is your formula for 0.87

01:23:51.660 existing in the world and so I see this as a continuation of that formula where it's like

01:23:56.720 she's now rejecting the person who she was like last year like for the last couple of years

01:24:02.720 she's doing this rejection and it's like it's performative by nature she's literally performing

01:24:08.380 and I don't know and I feel like I can't know whether this is also partially like is this

01:24:15.180 linked to what she's going through on a personal level is this like kind of a branding attempt

01:24:20.580 it's hard to piece out and the whole thing just like it's funny to me that people are so

01:24:25.960 obsessed with this because to me I'm just like it doesn't even interest me that much

01:24:29.920 yeah I you know I see a lot of people on like liberal slash left slash like queer internet 0.74

01:24:37.060 kind of theorizing like is this a sign of the times that like jojo siwa is dressing conservatively 0.87

01:24:43.240 um i think that might be a little heavy-handed we'll see how she like i guess continues to dress

01:24:48.840 i think right now we just have a couple tiktoks but what i want people listening especially to

01:24:54.640 this podcast to remember is that despite everything you know all of like the kind of clowning

01:25:01.740 on Jojo Siwa that comes from our portion of the internet. Jojo's main base is young kids

01:25:09.120 and their parents. The money is especially coming from their parents. And I just want people to

01:25:17.360 remember the level of scrutiny and homophobic harassment that Jojo Siwa has been on the

01:25:24.780 receiving end of, honestly, even before she came out from swaths of the internet that are much

01:25:31.220 bigger than like our little gay corner and i was reminded of this when she debuted this new look

01:25:37.120 and you had some prominent conservatives benny johnson wrote pop star jojo siwa's rebrand from

01:25:43.740 radical lesbian activist to a straight trad girlfriend needs to be studied we all know why

01:25:49.100 this really happened woke is dead nature is healing and then we have another one from hazel 0.99

01:25:54.580 apple yard incredible name she is like a turf twitter influencer over the pond in the uk turf 0.99

01:26:01.040 Island. She wrote, Jojo Siwa has done so much damage to the kids who looked up to her while

01:26:07.260 she squeaked alcohol on stage clad in rainbows and promoting transgenderism. And now she just 0.85

01:26:13.980 expects us to forget it all. I just want people to remember that there are very loud voices on

01:26:20.240 the other side. Like everyone has a loud opinion about Jojo Siwa, not just like the queers online 1.00

01:26:26.860 who are giggling about it everyone i certainly think this is a bizarre look for jojo but i guess 0.96

01:26:33.720 i just always want to remind people when it comes to her like she like i said at the top of the

01:26:38.440 episode she is the site upon which so many people project so many feelings about sexuality and gender

01:26:44.440 onto yes and it's also like when these conservative accounts are reading so much into these things

01:26:53.140 it's like it almost makes me think and perhaps this is overly optimistic but i almost feel like

01:26:58.700 jojo is trolling them a little bit because it's like i actually don't think she is like

01:27:04.500 jojo siwa 4d chess honestly it's more likely than you think like she's she's a smart young woman

01:27:12.340 i don't think she's doing this to provoke like benny johnson or this like this specific turf

01:27:17.480 hazel apple yard get her name right cat 0.92

01:27:20.660 it's like the way that betty johnson takes this picture of her on stage is like she was a radical

01:27:26.960 lesbian activist she wasn't she wasn't like a radical lesbian activist that's a performance

01:27:32.900 and so is the music video like these are both costumes she's just wearing costumes and people

01:27:39.420 are like projecting taking it and like extrapolating her whole life from them and they're projecting so

01:27:45.480 much onto her and it's like I do have to wonder if maybe some of the way that she's acting now

01:27:50.820 is a little bit in response to the absurdity of all of this and knowing I think baseline

01:27:56.720 she knows how to get and profit from attention and so a hundred percent there's some of that

01:28:04.420 coming in here but it's also like as far as we know she has not yet become a real child wife

01:28:09.560 like she is not like this is literally just like a costume yeah yeah exactly i want to end this on

01:28:17.140 jojo siwa is about to embark on yet another tour the infinity heart tour for which there

01:28:25.560 were a bunch of american dates and are a bunch of european dates so get your tickets quick or don't

01:28:32.100 i mean i have no investment in this but she canceled the american leg of the tour and people

01:28:39.500 are theorizing and this is like this is in the sun the uk newspaper the sun so like take it with

01:28:44.480 a grain of salt but there have been rumors that chris hughes and jojo siwa are in talks for a

01:28:51.480 spin-off reality show of their own and i wanted to conclude there because it is like the most

01:28:58.640 recent detail of jojo siwa's life and career but also it's like the truman show never ends

01:29:05.180 unless we stop feeding it you know yes and sorry yeah that's it and like this the the appetite and

01:29:15.220 the audience and the market value of this reality show would not exist if people were normal about

01:29:21.420 jojo siwa like people are feeding the beast and i genuinely think like there's a little bit of

01:29:28.560 knowing participation on both sides because it's like when people are engaging this heavily in

01:29:32.940 jojo siwa as a topic you know even if you don't want to admit it that you are like perpetuating

01:29:39.200 the jojo siwa phenomenon and jojo siwa knows she's perpetuating the jojo siwa phenomenon

01:29:43.980 so we're all just kind of like choosing to have jojo siwa be like one of the shows that are

01:29:50.240 available for us to watch i feel like everything you just said also applies really really well

01:29:56.640 to the online spectacle of eugenia cooney which i would love to elaborate on but we have been

01:30:05.980 recording for two hours and my blood sugar is getting extraordinarily low and my parents are

01:30:20.040 about to land at lga uh cat thank you so much for joining me on this episode again i feel like we

01:30:33.960 are at our best when we're talking about influencers with complex public images it is

01:30:39.900 one of our favorite things to talk about we do it all day and night even when we're not recording

01:30:44.060 if you the listener would like us to do this again more often what have you let me know oh

01:30:52.100 you know what we never did which i actually thought that we should do what it's too late now

01:30:57.540 they've already left me a one-star review we we haven't done a vocal fry disclaimer in a while

01:31:02.680 oh yes and some people i guess haven't seen or have willfully ignored the episodes where we have

01:31:10.580 done vocal fry disclaimers and i've noticed that some of you have been leaving my podcast one star

01:31:16.160 reviews talking about the vocal fry so i guess if you were going to do that over this episode you

01:31:22.800 already have and it is what it is kat i love you thank you so much for being here oh thank you so

01:31:28.920 much for having me and thank you the listeners so much for joining us on this episode if you

01:31:35.360 would like to find more of Kat I will link all of her stuff as always in the episode description

01:31:40.920 please go buy a subscription to her independent journalism over at Spitfire News it is truly some

01:31:48.240 of the best influencer and celebrity political reporting happening online right now and Kat

01:31:55.680 definitely deserves the support that you've given to this show I am so grateful for you thank you

01:32:01.000 for being here. I love you. And until next time, stay fruity.

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - July 25, 2025

Jojo Siwa： The Internet’s Court Jester

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