JoJo Siwa Makes History In First Same-Sex Pairing On ‘Dancing With The Stars’
In a first for the US version of Dancing With The Stars, dancer, singer and YouTube personality JoJo Siwa will be part of the first ever same-sex dance team to compete on the show.
While Siwa is making history for the USA version, same-sex couples have been featured on other international franchises of the show, including Italy, Israel, Ireland, and Denmark (where Jakob Fauerby and Silas Holst took home the Mirrorball trophy). In 2019, Courtney Act and her dance partner Joshua Keefe took second-place in the 16th season of the Australian version of the show.
Siwa, 18, made the announcement on the program’s social media pages, saying, “I am so excited to be a part of this year’s Dancing With The Stars, season 30, and to be dancing with a girl; I think it’s so cool…it’s going to be the best ever. I can’t wait to just dance every single week. I can’t wait to meet my partner. Oh my gosh, there are so many things I am so excited for.”
Siwa’s professional dance partner has yet to be named.
Bring on the sequins and the sparkles. ✨ We’re SIWA excited for this! 🎀 #DWTS @itsjojosiwa pic.twitter.com/mzwezAm0An
— Dancing with the Stars #DWTS (@officialdwts) August 26, 2021
‘Using Her Platform To Uplift & Inspire’
In a statement, GLAAD’s head of talent, Anthony Allen Ramos said, “At 18, JoJo Siwa is once again using her platform to inspire and uplift the LGBTQ community…This show has such a wide, far-reaching audience and there is a real opportunity here for people to celebrate the same-sex pairing and root for JoJo and all LGBTQ young people.”
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Siwa came out in January 2020 in what were considered to be cryptic posts on TikTok and Instagram, where she lip-synched to Lady Gaga’s Born This Way.
Siwa later confirmed in a People cover story in April 2020, that she was part of the LGBTQI+ community. “I still don’t know what I am. It’s like 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.”
Siwa currently boasts almost 11 million Instagram followers, 12.2 YouTube subscribers and 615k followers on Twitter. Her D.R.E.A.M. The Tour, which hit the road in 2019, sold over 506k tickets netting the teen star an estimated $27 million. She has also become a merchandising mogul, starting with sales of oversized hair bows and growing into product lines and partnerships with Nickelodeon, Target, Walmart and JC Penney, and a personal worth estimated at $19 million.
100 Most Influential People In The World
Siwa, who first rose to fame on the reality show Dance Moms, made the list of the “100 Most Influential people In the World,” in Time magazine in 2020, where Kim Kardashian West called Siwa, “a ray of sunshine in a world that seems scary right now…there’s no one more positive than JoJo.”
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Siwa is currently in a relationship with Kylie Prew, 18, whom Siwa described as “the love of my life and who is everything to me,” in a recent interview with USA Today.
In a conversation with PeopleTV Siwa said, “For the first time personally, I am like, whoa, happiness. It’s so cool. It’s so awesome. But my whole thing with me coming out is like I knew since I was little, you can ask any one of my family. No, I never would have said like, I am straight. I only like boys. I always just said my human is my human and one day if that happens to be a girl, awesome.”
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In June, Siwa posted on Instagram, “Happy pride month! It’s time to celebrate being who you are and LOVING who YOU wanna LOVE!! It really has been the best 5 months of my life truly being exactly who I am and finding love has been the best part of it all. I love this human so much. I’m so happy.”
