A BRAND
IS BORN
Culture
UpsTairs aT The Beacon TheaTre in
New York City, little girls were bouncing
in like grounders, but JoJo Siwa knew how
to field them. She caught their smart-
phone cameras in her right hand, scooped
in their tiny shoulders with her left. The
girls cracked smiles. They squinted. They
screamed. Siwa bared her own teeth,
looked into the front-facing lens and took
a photo. “Awesome!” she said, and moved
on to the next. At this particular meet and
greet, arranged for the children of Viacom
executives, she’d average about eight self-
ies per minute.
Siwa, 16, has spaghetti blond hair
and a voice like a wooden roller-coaster
track—fun but rough, with unexpected
undulations. She began her rise to fame
around 2015 as a hammy preteen with a
machinating mom on the Lifetime reality-
TV series Dance Moms. Since then, a tal-
ent deal with Nickelodeon has crowned
her America’s most famous children’s
entertainer—a singular star with more
spunk than Shirley Temple and the mer-
chandizing power of both Olsen twins.
Arguably, Siwa’s main career is as a singer,
though what sets her apart from the ear-
lier child stars is the relative equanim-
ity of her pursuits and the way they’ve
been stitched together to perpetuate one
another, using her online presence as a
thread. On YouTube, Siwa has 10 million
subscribers, mostly grade-school kids and
preteen girls who listen to her music, con-
sume her lifestyle content and beg for the
hundreds—thousands?—of products fea-
tured throughout both. When JoJo Siwa
passes through your town—and she
might on her JoJo Siwa D.R.E.A.M. the
Tour—sales of her signature hair-bow
line at Claire’s could spike up to 60%. In
Time Sept. 2–9, 2019
You can buy JoJo Siwa’s face at any store,
but the pop star’s persona is not for sale
BY JAMIE LAUREN KEILES
PHOTOGRAPH BY CHARLOTTE RUTHERFORD FOR TIME
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