77
Bow Show Show, a cartoon series. It also
appears, in buyable form, on her JoJo’s
Closet consumer products line, available
at Walmart and Target. Amazon has more
than six pages of official JoJo products.
The JoJo aesthetic is Midwestern
Bob Mackie: rainbow sequin separates,
machine -washable tulle, hearts and stars
and unicorns. There are JoJo Siwa sneak-
ers, JoJo Siwa pillows, JoJo Siwa fruit
snacks and JoJo Siwa dolls. There are life-
size JoJo Siwa wall decals and JoJo Siwa
training bras. In Siwa’s California home—
where the whole family now lives—there’s
a JoJo Siwa “merch room” containing all
these products. A tour of the trove can be
easily found on the JoJo Siwa YouTube
channel. Beyond this room, the rest of
the house is also festooned with JoJo Siwa
merchandise.
Considering the scope of her career, it
is hard to find the line where children’s
entertainer segues into intellectual prop-
erty. The closest parallel might be Mary-
Kate and Ashley Olsen, whose conglom-
erate Dualstar exceeded a billion dollars
in retail sales in 2011. But as the Olsens
graduated from Full House, their empire
matured to include tween entertainment
and, later, their understated adult fash-
ion line the Row. At 16, JoJo is still rain-
bows and sparkles. Watching from afar,
it’s hard to believe that the star will not
soon outgrow her brand.
This crisis of maturity breeds hate more
than concern, at least among those adults
who even know who JoJo Siwa is. The
comments on her YouTube channel are
disabled according to the platform’s pol-
icy on minors, but elsewhere online, she
receives a barrage of criticism. “Why does
JoJo Siwa have the voice of an old white
gym teacher?” wonders one Twitter user.
Another scoffs that she acts “like a 5-year-
old on acid.” “Can we pray for JoJo Siwa’s
hairline?” asks a third. Last year, when
JoJo debuted her Christmas present—
a BMW 4 Series convertible, wrapped
in a giant image of her face—25-year-
old Justin Bieber commented on Insta-
gram, “Burn it.” (He later apologized.)
Children’s entertainment is frequently
inane, but JoJo rams a rod through a cul-
tural nerve center. Her clothing is gauche.
Her excitement is annoying. She’s aggres-
sively confident. In a world overwhelmed
by so much irony and pain, she comes
across, at best, as a blithe anachronism.
At worst, she is part of the problem itself:
the crass co-optation of empowerment
for cash, resulting in an endless stream
of plastic toward the landfill.
Because JoJo’s image is so often
reproduced—and reproduced with such
pizzazz—it seems to recommend her as
an object, not a person. In an industry
prone to sexualizing teen girls, her child-
like demeanor feels uncanny or coerced.
(It comes across as doubly strange once
you learn she’s 5 ft. 9 in.) While other fe-
male stars her age enjoy at least some up-
lift from third-wave pop feminism, JoJo
remains the butt of the joke, the face in
the meme, the reason to cringe. Under-
lying all this hate, there appears to per-
sist a kind of lurid disbelief: Can someone
really be this way? Can a girl with her face
on a fruit snack ever grow?The morning of her New York City
performance on June 18, Siwa arrived
at the theater in stage makeup—a silver
glitter star over one eye, inscribed in
her heart-shaped JoJo Siwa logo. She
does her own makeup first thing when
she wakes up, to leave more time to run
around backstage. In just one month of
being on the road, she’d already traveled
to 14 states, visiting 21 venues. In total,
her show will make 89 stops. “But this
is the day that I’ve been most looking
forward to,” she said. “This is the onlyvenue that I cross Freddie Mercury.”
Queen is Siwa’s “favorite thing ever,”
even more since seeing Bohemian Rhap-
sody last year. Off to the side, on the
dressing -room floor, a shadow box from
her manager showed Queen keepsakes
and their JoJo analogs—the Queen Q
crest and the JoJo Siwa heart, Mercury’s
marque and her own.
The rest of the dressing room was ar-
rayed with the temporary comforts of the
road. A can of drugstore hair spray on the
vanity stood tall. A box of Lucky Charms,
relieved of its marshmallows, waited for
an adult to come and refold its flaps.
In the corner, a redundant publi-
cist scrutinized the conversation with-
out speaking. Siwa has an innate media
savvy that calls up questions of nature
vs. nurture. She speaks with the kind of
naive self-possession that comes with
never having had to doubt yourself. “Be
yourself ” is the ethos of her brand. Self-
acceptance, Siwa said, is part of what
fuels her respect for Mercury.
“He was unapologetically himself...
He looked different than everyone,” she
said. “I’ve always been like that, and I’ve
never really known someone who pretty
much does what I do.” She sped through
the thought, then doubled back again.
“But obviously Queen is on a much dif-
ferent level.”
In person, Siwa is easy to like. What
sounds onscreen like boilerplate comes
across in life as a coherent value system.
“Be yourself ” may be a platitude for chil-
dren, but the teen, unbelievably, remains
a true believer. Siwa likes herself, likes
being herself and wants people to know
that she likes being herself. A small, but
significant, part of her life involves asking
people to take her at face value.
“The third time I met with Pam”—
Kaufman, president of Viacom Nickel-
odeon global consumer products—“she◁
The star’s
face graces
everything
from sheet
sets to smart
watches.