JoJo Siwa’s racy new photoshoot leaves fans divided: ‘Kinda a gag’
JoJo Siwa. (Getty)
JoJo Siwa’s racy new photoshoot has left fans divided, with some calling it “kinda a gag” and others feeling confused.
Siwa, who came out as a lesbian in 2021, has spent the past few months trying to rework her clean-cut Dance Moms image into a more mature, edgy brand, akin to Miley Cyrus’ Bangerz era… sometimes with less-than-positive results.
After releasing the single Karma”, the singer was criticised for saying she had invented a new genre of music called gay pop. The video for the track featured her humping and grinding on her female love interest.
This week, the star, who wants to represent Poland at Eurovision despite bosses saying they are not in talks with her, had tongues wagging again in the wake of her photoshoot for Ladygunn.
One image shows Siwa in a gold diamanté-studded body plate and matching jockstrap with phallic detail, and a pair of gold boots. She is squatting, starring off to the side, her tattoos on show and blonde hair windswept across her face and left shoulder.
In other images, the singer is wearing the same outfit combined with gold-bedazzled goggles featuring spikes and a long iridescent, pink-toned wrap around her – the material of which can only be described as looking like The Purple One from a box of Quality Street.
Fans were quick to react to the shoot. “No hate, I’m honestly just confused,” one social media user wrote. A second said: Just spit my water out at work,” while a third joked: “It’s not a good day to have eyes.”
Someone else said: “Everything I learn about Jojo Siwa has been against my will,” while another felt that while they understood she was “trying to shake the teen-bopper image” this shoot had gone “just too far”.
Others, however, called the look “camp” and “a slay”.
One person on Instagram insisted: “If this was Gaga, y’all would eat it up,” while an X/Twitter user shared that sentiment, saying: “The only reason y’all don’t like this is because it’s Jojo Siwa… if Chappell [Roan] wore this, y’all would be eating it up.”
In her interview with Ladygunn, Siwa touched on the topic of all the attention she gets – good and bad.
“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 said. “I just signed with new management, and they’re great, amazing people. They were like: ‘All right, we got to get people to rally around you and start to like you’. And I was like: ‘Oh no, that’s not the point’.
“I was the most hated on [Dance Moms]. But my mom was like: ‘Nobody can take away what you did. Sure, people are commenting we want JoJo to go home, but people are commenting, we want JoJo’.
“There [are] parts of me that the world just doesn’t see because it’s not entertaining. 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.”
Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.
How did this story make you feel?
