photos by Hope Glassel, styling by Phil Gomez, MUA Donny Davy with Opus Beauty, Hair by Isaac Davidson, PA Luka Stage, Styling Assistant Pariss Roman
Story / Koko Ntuen + Sam Berlin
“Welcome to the party,” JoJo Siwa says as she opens the door to her hotel room, the penthouse of a conspicuous chain smack dab in the middle of Times Square. She’s smiling as she escorts us into the carpeted room, her candy aura mixing with the musky air.
“I don’t know why she’s staying here.” Her publicist had said when he led us through the crowded lobby.
JoJo is fresh-faced and wearing a navy blue New York City Police Department shirt, sweatpants, and Gucci jewelry with a white lace bow tied to perfection around her ponytail. The internet mogul exudes a media-trained confidence that feels measured while touting the line of vulnerability.
“When I’m in that Karma beast makeup, I am in it and feeling it. I am that person,” JoJo says, sitting with a pristine posture upright on the sofa. “But then when I’m chilling at the Crown Plaza in my NYPD shirt, doing an interview, then going on a bike ride – that’s also me.”
To the millions who watched her on Lifetime’s Dance Moms, JoJo is still the blue-eyed 9-year-old dancer with a penchant for rhinestone bows and being pushed to the edge. Following JoJo’s breakout role, her Cheshire grin was plastered everywhere, from television commercials to Target chains nationwide.
“You’re like, this master of the attention economy,” Koko says to JoJo.
“Thank you,” JoJo replies. “I’m an attention whore.”
JoJo’s brain constantly aggregates content; everything she does seems to become a headline or a trending topic. Her language is calculated and complimentary where it should be. She likens her craft to that of “a bit,” equating it to the fun of a game. She often discussed her rise to fame – or notoriety – as a plan.
JoJo sees herself as a curator of attention, collecting the internet’s energy and perceptions. She gives kudos to brothers Jake and Logan Paul, who transformed YouTube into a content farm and gained notoriety for their controversial stunts and videos. Like a painter focused solely on honing their practice, the Paul brothers were also crafting their art of capturing attention, positive or not.
“I pulled so much of my social media marketing and inspiration from them back in the day because when I was 13, 14, 15, they are all I wanted to be on YouTube,” JoJo said. “Their views, their numbers, their marketing. They were geniuses. They still are geniuses. But the things they did, all I wanted to do was be them. And so I figured, how can I do that but in my world?”
JoJo is twenty-one years old now, still with the same cherub-like face and affinity for glitter. Yet a lot has changed since she appeared on TV in 2015: she chopped her signature ponytail, changed her color palette, and came out as lesbian. But one thing stays the same: she’s still everywhere.
“Everyone always tells me ‘you need to open a marketing company,’” she says. “And I tell them, I wish I could, but I literally can’t; the only thing I know how to market is myself.”
Whether it was sparring words with Justin Bieber on Twitter or her playdate with North West, JoJo’s fixture in mainstream media has been a steady climb to the top of the attention economy, and commenters have been given carte blanche on dissecting her every move.
“I learned at a very young age that in the public eye, any attention is attention…whether it be good attention or just attention,” she says directly. “I just signed with new management, and they’re great, amazing people. They were like, alright, we got to get people to rally around you and really start to like you. And I was like, oh no, that’s not the point.”
As a child on Dance Moms, her mother taught her an important lesson about handling criticism; but JoJo remembers constantly feeling reassured it was all part of a bigger plan.
“I was the most hated on that show. But my mom was like, nobody can take away what you did,” she says. “Sure, people are commenting we want JoJo to go home, but people are commenting, we want JoJo. You know what I mean?”
The new era of JoJo was ushered in with her single “Karma”–a song with a lore of its own. JoJo’s ponytail is down, and she’s ready to be a “bad girl,” a coming of age, as you will, with the viral video and accompanying dance still trolling the internet months later.
“Karma is still an earworm. It’s crazy that it still has some relevance five months later,” JoJo says. “And that’s the whole point.”
JoJo doesn’t want to be pretty; she wants to be seen and talked about. And it is working. Over the last couple of years, her loud personality and wild antics have grown her cult following to millions.
“It’s funny because now I’m in a place in my career where I’m in that same phase before I put the hair down,” JoJo says, referencing the lead-up to her appearing without the signature tight side pony in summer 2022. “It is a fun game not to reveal its secrets and the secret sauce. It’s like you love [Raising] Cane’s sauce, but you don’t fully know what’s in it.”
She successfully imprinted herself in the pop culture zeitgeist, becoming a character larger than herself. Her desire for a “Miley Cyrus Bangers” moment has been fulfilled. From youth, she transcended a reality TV show as a child into a billion-dollar empire of bows and lollipop-like sweet images plastered across t-shirts, pajamas, cars, and even singing toothbrushes. And yet, no one has fully figured out what it is about her that keeps people coming back, whether they want to or not.
“My favorite thing to do on this earth is to entertain and to make people smile and laugh, whether or not they are laughing with me or at me,” JoJo says. “Obviously, no one likes being hated, but I enjoy being entertaining, and that is how people are entertained.”
Fame has become a full-time job after years of radiating sparkles and forming parasocial relationships with the internet. JoJo is used to looking over her shoulder and giving her fans a quick selfie. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be out in public without people staring.
“I definitely disassociate well. It’s a special talent for sure,” JoJo says. “So whatever moment I’m in, I’m in it for that moment. Once it’s done, though, I’ll be out. You know what I mean? That’s the kind of a skill that I’ve learned over the years and has helped me.”
JoJo realized how to use the internet in a way that works for her. She’s extreme and bold and prepared to have her image monopolized.
“We’re here at [New York] Fashion Week, even this with LADYGUNN; I was like, I am down, but we have to go somewhere with it,” JoJo says.“We can’t just do a cool photo shoot and hope for the best. It has to be like, what the fuck is she wearing now? You know what I mean? It has to be what is the next Halloween costume.”
As she says this, her now-viral fuzzy black ball Christian Cowan NYFW look sits behind us like furniture on a table. JoJo sat in the front row at the show in the hands-free theatrical look paired with knee-high green monster boots. The next day on set, her publicist reads off the headlines: the Front page of WWD, New York Magazine, and EOnline. JoJo inquires if CNN has posted anything.
“There’s parts of me that the world just doesn’t see because it’s not entertaining,” JoJo says. “And that’s what I always tell everyone. No one wants to see me be boring. The part of me that the world doesn’t see is the person controlling the image you do see.”