The 17-year-old Internet star recalls the fan reactions to her opening up about her sexuality.
JoJo Siwa is happy to be out and living her truth! The 17-year-old Internet sensation came out about her sexuality this past January in a series of posts, and later announced she has a girlfriend, 18-year-old Kylie Prew.
"I've never gotten this much support from the world," Siwa tells People magazine. "I think this is the first time that I've felt so personally happy. Performing has always made me super happy. But for the first time, personally, I am like, whoa, happiness. I am so proud to be me."
Siwa still shies away from labels, saying she's trying to figure out her sexuality.
"I still don't know what I am. It's like, I want to figure it out," she admits. "And I have this joke. Her name is Kylie. And so I say that I'm Ky-sexual. But like, 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."
Despite not wanting to attach herself to a specific label, Siwa elaborates, "I like queer. Technically I would say that I am pansexual because that's how I have always been my whole life is just like, my human is my human."
The performer also shares that not all of the responses to her coming out were positive. Siwa says she made the mistake of Googling herself and reading the comments shortly after her announcement.
"I never should have done that. I was thinking that all the comments were going to be nice and supportive, and they weren't," she recalls. "A lot of them were, 'I'm never buying your merch again. My daughter's never watching you again.' I couldn't sleep for three days."
But ultimately, Siwa came to the conclusion that she wasn't going to let the negative comments get to her.
"My thing is, I don't want people to watch my videos or buy my merchandise if they aren't going to support not only me, but the LGBTQ community," she explains.
In February, Siwa revealed that she'd been seeing Prew since January, and that the two had met on a cruise ship.
"I told her my whole spiel that I tell everyone when they ask me my life story," Siwa recalled. "She goes, 'I could have Googled that. I want to know your life story. You just told me about your career. I want to know about you.' And I was like, No one's ever asked me that before."
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