She just felt like it! JoJo Siwa reveals in her new Entertainment Weekly digital cover story that when she came out to her fans earlier this year, she hadn’t planned it out.
“My coming out was kind of odd how it happened,” she told the magazine. “It was so unplanned.”
The 18-year-old singer and YouTube personality shares that although she’s known ever since she was a young child that she’s not straight, she figured, “If I have someone to come out with, then I will come out.”
And when she did, Siwa did have someone holding her hand. Shortly after sharing that she’s gay, the teen star celebrated her one-month anniversary with Kylie Prew, and in her interview, shared how her girlfriend played a role in her coming out.
“The TikTokers from the Pride House came over to my house and so we did this TikTok together, and it was like to the song ‘Ain’t It Fun’ — ‘ain’t it fun now that you’re one of us,’” she recalled. “And after I did it, I called my girlfriend … I was like. I think after they post this TikTok, it’s going to out me.’ She was like, ‘It for sure is.’ I was like, ‘Great, sick.’”
Siwa went on to share that fans immediately started going “bananas” over the clip. Her response? The lip-sync to Lady Gaga’s LGBTQ+ anthem “Born This Way.”
Shortly after, the social media personality shared, one of the members of Pride House who’s known Siwa since she was a little girl texted to apologize for all the speculation arising from the TikTok video and offered to take it down. But the star didn’t want the video removed. Instead, she confirmed the rumors and shared that she had a girlfriend. “I actually am in a really happy relationship with a girl, and it’s my first ever, so I don’t mind,” Siwa recalled telling the Pride House member. “It’s making this all super easy, and making this all feel super happy and welcomed. I love it.”
She was so happy about the response to the TikTok and “Born This Way” videos that she wanted to confirm what she hadn’t explicitly said.
“I had taken my Best Gay Cousin Ever shirt picture and posted it on my close friends story, so that way, all my close friends knew,” explained Siwa, who pointed out that she also checked with Prew to make sure she was ready — and she was. “And I was on FaceTime with my girlfriend and was like, ‘I wanna post this on my real story!’ And she was like, ‘Do it!’ I was like, ‘OK! So boop!’ Then I was like, ‘Uh oh! I just did that! Everyone’s going to kill me!’ I was like, ‘But I don’t care; it’ll be fun.’”
“It was never scary to me to put out to the world that I was happy or that I was in love,” she added, noting that her parents both told her that her happiness is most important.
“That I was the happiest I’ve ever been. I’ve shared my entire life with the world,” she said. “It was all super smooth is the short version of the story.”
Watch the EW video of her coming out story:
