When you hear the name JoJo Siwa, what is the first thing that pops into your mind? Is it her bows? Or maybe her ponytail that is so tight it has the internet worried for her hairline? Or maybe how surprising it is that she’s 5’9”?
Joelle Joanie Siwa (Jojo) was born in May 2003 in Omaha, Nebraska, which makes her just over 16 years old. Although she’d been singing and dancing as long as her mom Jessalyn (a dance teacher herself) could remember, she started her career on one of the many spin-off shows Dance Moms spurred, Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition, in 2013 when she was just nine years old. She’d been dancing for seven years already, and at the time, her goal was to become a professional dancer or if that didn’t work out, a dance teacher.
Spoiler alert: It worked out.
She ended up in the top five of the show despite being the youngest competitor and went on to audition for the Abby Lee Dance Company’s competition team in 2014, finally making her debut with the team in 2015.
If you’re unfamiliar with Dance Moms, I can give you a one-word synopsis much like any other reality show: DRAMA. I began watching routinely during their first season and it was almost addicting. Watching seven or eight-year-olds berated by their dance teacher while their mothers watched in horror and simultaneously trash-talked each other makes for some terrible reality TV. The show ran for seven seasons until Miss Abby was convicted of filing false bankruptcy claims in 2015; however, since her release and her recovery from brain cancer, she’s begun an eighth season with a full new competition team.
Back to JoJo. She appeared in seasons 5 and 6 of Dance Moms but left after signing a contract with Nickelodeon, which I believe was the best decision she ever made. Through Nickelodeon, she starred in the movie Blurt with Jace Norman (who I would consider today’s children’s version of Zac Efron), multiple holiday specials, as well as co-hosting Lip Sync Battle Shorties with Nick Cannon. Other on-screen opportunities have included Angry Birds 2 and her own web-series called The JoJo and BowBow Show Show, documenting her life with her small dog, BowBow.
Along with her on-screen success, she released 13 singles, with her debut single “Boomerang” being certified platinum, selling over a million copies and raking up 730 million views on YouTube. Through her music career, she’s gone on her D.R.E.A.M. tour, doing 80 dates in the U.S. and bringing her tour across the pond to the U.K. and Ireland as well.
Her face is in almost every single store on merchandise of some sort, ranging from toothbrushes and craft sets to slime kits and her signature bows. Kids cry for a JoJo doll for their birthdays or for the JoJo backpack for upcoming school years.
But why?
Her age demographic on her YouTube channel that has surpassed 10 million subscribers is grade-school kids and preteen girls who have finally found someone in the media who is speaking to them as a person. The media that older teenagers and adults consume is filled with real people that entertain us for our pleasure whenever we want, so why shouldn’t children get the same luxury?
As a kid, I remember looking up to the actors behind the characters whom I looked up to, but things weren’t the same. Vanessa Hudgens isn’t the nerdy girl who the jock picked from High School Musical; she’s just an actress. Demi Lovato isn’t a dreaming wannabe pop-star (at least not anymore) from Camp Rock; she’s Demi frickin’ Lovato. How can we compare ourselves at those young ages to such high expectations? The youngest people I can remember that I was able to look up to through elementary school were Rico from Hannah Montana and the little brother from Shake It Up, but they were never the main character!
But why is that? These shows targeted to children almost always seem to center around a main character who is in high school. Can you imagine how hard it was for budding actress and singer Miley Cyrus to uphold the image of Hannah Montana as she was going through her rough teenage years, trying to find out who she was? No wonder we viewed her as such a “child star gone wrong”—she wasn’t really a child at all! She was 17 by the end of this Disney TV show that she’d decided to audition for when she was 11 and had to continue to keep up the image of this person who wasn’t really her anymore.
JoJo is JoJo. No doubt about it. She’s not playing a character. She isn’t a role being filled by a 16-year-old trying to get a paycheck or get her next big break. She is herself and has been since the beginning. She wants to do this. She isn’t craving rebellion or wanting to have “a real teenage experience” because this has been her goal from the start. In her article with TIME Magazine, the closest likeness they could compare her to were Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who were just before my time. JoJo is here and ready to step into their space for the generation who needs her most.
People are so quick to say that she’s too old to dress the way she dresses or too childish in the way she acts, but I think she is a genius. She’s just young enough to still maintain this image of youth while being old enough to understand what she’s doing and be able to advocate for herself and her followers. And advocate she does. In her article with TIME, she says, “The third time I met with Pam”—Kaufman, president of Viacom Nickelodeon global consumer products—“she said, ‘You know, you don’t have to come to these meetings all JoJo. You can just come normal.’ And I said, ‘Pam, we have to have a talk, because I need you to know that this is my normal. This is my life. There is no other secret. There is no other person. I literally am JoJo. I wear the bright clothes every day. I wear the sparkly hair bows. I wear the high-top shoes. I sing the fun music. I talk really loud. I talk fast, and I talk a lot. This is who I am.’”
This fact makes it even less weird to me that she dresses and acts the way she does. If it were a costume or a character, I’d hope they’d let her grow up and experience life outside sequins, glitter and bows. But since this is the life she enjoys, why knock her down for it?
She doesn’t just let people sell her face, she sells her face. She’s in the production process of almost every single thing she sells, whether it’s the design or the picture or the fonts or what it says, she’s deciding and it’s definitely working!
I think the most important thing is that we recognize how she can influence our children of the future. The kids she’s reaching are being taught messages of self-acceptance and confidence from a REAL PERSON! Through her colorful and sparkly wardrobe she’s relating to them on a level that isn’t used to speak to them often. Look at other 16-year-olds in the media: most of the other Dance Moms girls, Sophia Grace from Ellen, Danielle Bregoli (“Cash me outside,” anyone?), or any other 16-year-old you may stumble upon on the Internet. You’re probably surprised at just how old they look and act. I recommend taking a peek at Sophia Grace if you haven’t recently, because it blew my mind and made me feel 10x older than I should feel.
This isn’t to say that the way these other 16-year-olds, and in fact most 16-year-olds, are living is wrong. That’s how I lived. But I tend to wonder how I would have continued to live my life had the world around me not made me feel like it was time to grow up. Personally, something that I struggled with was loving boy-bands. At JoJo’s age, I was hiding my “childish” behavior.
I hated on things I loved just because the world told me it was uncool. I listened in secret and hid my passion away, because I didn’t think it was something I was allowed to enjoy anymore.
As a college student, I’ve finally accepted that liking a band has no age, no matter who they may be. To say that if JoJo had been around when I was young I would have just thrown away what the world around me said is an overstatement, but it definitely resonates with me now, which is why I think I respect her so much. She’s doing what I wish I could go back and do. The standard that the Internet holds this 16-year-old accountable to speaks volumes at how young we expect children to start presenting like adults.
At what point are our children supposed to pick up their dolls for the last time and stop wearing fun sparkly outfits and start to fall into the crowd with everyone else? As JoJo says, “What do they want me to do? Wear black?”
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