“Gay pop” star JoJo Siwa might be looking to change the name of her beloved genre to “queer pop” after a recent episode of Celebrity Big Brother UK.
On the April 22 episode of the show, Siwa spoke with fellow contestant and Drag Race UK winner Danny Beard about how her experience in the Big Brother house has helped her come to terms with her evolving sexuality. “It’s made me feel so queer. And I’ve always been afraid of feeling ‘queer,’” she said. “Like, I always said ‘lesbian,’ right? But I feel, like, so queer … I think I’ve always told myself I’m a lesbian, and I think being here I’ve realized, ‘Oh, I’m not a lesbian, I’m queer.’ And I think that’s really cool.”
She continued, saying that she’s “switching letters” before exlcaiming, “F–k the ‘L’, I’m going to the ‘Q’!”
Siwa first came out publicly in 2021, when she posted a photo of herself wearing a T-shirt that read “Best. Gay. Cousin. Ever.” In a 2021 interview with People magazine, though, Siwa explained that she was still figuring out which label best fit her. “I want to figure it out … I don’t know — bisexual, pansexual, queer, lesbian, gay, straight. I always just say ‘gay’ because it just kind of covers it, or ‘queer’ because I think the keyword is cool,” she said at the time.
Siwa had also previously been criticized by a fan who claimed that she called the word “lesbian” a “dirty word,” which she vehemently denied. “I never said that ‘lesbian’ was a dirty word and I never, ever would say that it’s a dirty word because it is not. It is not a bad word, it is not a slur and it is especially not a word that I am ashamed of saying or ashamed of identifying as by any means,” she said in a 2023 TikTok.
This also isn’t the first time Siwa’s sexuality has been brought up in the Celebrity Big Brother UK house. In earlier episodes of the season, contestant Mickey Rourke was “warned” about making inappropriate comments to Siwa about her sexuality, including the use of slurs, saying that he would “vote the lesbian out” and claiming that the “Karma” singer wouldn’t “be gay anymore” if he stayed for longer than four days. Rourke later agreed to leave the competition and apologized to Siwa and the other contestants he offended with his comments.
