JoJo Siwa: Bedazzled Identities and Manufactured Narcissism
Trapped in the delusion loop of the celebrity machine
There’s this JoJo Siwa clip circulating (everything I know about her, I know against my will), a child reality TV star from Teen Moms (I think). Throughout her late teens, she acted under the disguise of a child, an act that has now taken a particular turn (she keeps talking about the drastic switch she's taking…). And now she’s 20, so the act went from weird, to creepy weird, so instead of masquerading as a 10-year-old, she’s a 20-year-old playing the role of…well, a 20-year-old (rebel?).
A rebel that believes they are inventing…gay pop…
Anyway, I couldn’t help but marvel at the extent of her egoism and narcissism, which is blatantly built from pressure to become a product, thus she has become an identity mimicking a product. This has her living in a special kind of delu delu town, surrounded by residents who only know the word ‘yes’.
JoJo has become a representation of life that replaces direct experiences with mere images and appearances. She grew up under the spotlight and pressures of reality TV which prioritizes spectacle over authenticity. The spectacle that she has become shapes her interactions and the expectations placed upon her, creating a scenario where her public and private selves are likely indistinguishable, leading to a life where she is constantly performing roles scripted by others—first by TV producers and later by social media and public expectations.
“You’re making a lot of claims about someone’s psychological state without enough context.”
Maybe. Probably. But read this and ask yourself, is it more likely that I’m right? Or is it more likely that I’m wrong?
Send me life questions and stories, and I'll provide you my unqualified advice in a laughably arrogant response…
So, here's a study which found that narcissism was most prevalent among celebrities, although the study is slightly dated at this point, the results probably don’t come much as a shock. But what is interesting is the type of celebrity that ranked highest in narcissism—reality TV stars.
But this got me thinking, why is she this way? How did she become so detached from reality that she is constantly being torn apart on social media?
"Well, she is a product of being a reality tv star as a child."
Yes, but the deeper answer, in my opinion, is far more sinister.
Reality TV is a distorted reflection of the world, magnifying its most extreme and dramatic elements. She was just a child when she became a pawn on “Dance Moms”, manufactured by TLC (assuming this because this channel was in the business of creating opium for the masses) for brain rot entertainment.
So, she was a child star from "Dance Moms," a brain-rotting show produced by TLC.
She was/is a child commodity and product… "We've all become commodities" is cultural commentary that has been overdone, including by me. But JoJo, now claiming to be a “bad girl,” is desperate to cling onto fame and relevance. The product (show) must go on! Perhaps her mother pushes her, living vicariously through her daughter’s fabricated persona. Or maybe it’s JoJo herself, craving validation from an audience of strangers in the digital realm to appease her mother and herself.
Either way, their relationship is built on artificial identities, fueled by an endless cycle of seeking validation through the eye balls of the people sitting behind screens. This creates a twisted method of self-affirmation for the psyche, as it becomes an endless cycle of feeding their narcissistic tendencies through an artificial identity built to be a consumed product.
She is caught in the a loop of constructing and consuming identity, blindly chasing her dwindling fame in a never-ending loop of delusion and desperation.
Identity A: created in her reality tv-child star era where her mother made her child cry for money, drama, and viewers…
"I am a good girl that wears BRIGHTLY bedazzled clothes for kids."
Identity B: created as a response to turning 18? I guess. She’s never been allowed to behave authentically, so JoJo and her team of ‘Yes’ people respond with the most cliche example found in young adulthood (one that only old, boring, and low intelligent adults could imagine)…
"I am a bad girl that wears DARKLY bedazzled clothes for kids.” (Also: for fans that grew up with her and still follow her because they never grew emotionally, so they cope with still supporting her by claiming they do it out of a sense of nostalgia)
Do you get it? The only persona her team could conceive for post-childhood innocence is one of superficial rebellion…because she’s now a young adult…and is also a lesbian…so this makes her inherently rebellious and bad?
JoJo team and mother: “Oh…you’re a lesbian…this makes your image rebellious, right? Okay, we can sell that, next phase rebellion. Look at you, a lesbian rebel, we are so bad, do you feel bad JoJo, you know…you’re a lesbian!?”
She desires the identity as 'the bad girl,' while it's evident she's not that girl at all, nor is her idea of it based in reality. What intrigues me most about her newfound desire to 'be bad' is the apparent hunger for authenticity. She wants to do what others perceive as bad - 'drugs, sex, and being a rebellious human.’ She wants to be a person who lives through their behaviors, where these behaviors form the sense of self, whereas she currently exists through her identity. When we live through our actions and behavior, we evolve; when we exist through our identity and one especially built for the gaze of others, we merely react, and then only know stagnation.
It's as if she's acting out someone else's character in another person's dream.
I'd suggest she 'stick to what she's good at,' but I suspect she hasn't the faintest idea what that might be. Remember, she probably resides in a town where everyone knows only how to say ‘yes’ – a town whose sole aim is to maintain the flow of money and keep her self-esteem inflated. But high self-esteem doesn't equate to being good (nor bad), being interesting, or being a psychologically healthy person; it likely makes one more prone to narcissism (also not good or bad) instead. And if your sense of worth is derived from validation assigned to an identity shaped by your childhood tears under the zombified gaze of millions behind screens, you're likely suffering from delusional self-esteem rather than one built on actions and behaviors taken within our pressure-driven society.
JoJo's reason for change doesn’t express any real behavior change, no new self-awareness, no epiphanies. She merely desires for her identity to morph, so she adopts the aesthetic of someone who typed in 'bad girl' on Pinterest and considered it mission accomplished.
“I’m getting older, so it must be time for me to change, right? Right? Hey chat, tell me if I’m right, I need to know how to act (react)!”
Allow me to correct that: her mom navigated Pinterest and typed 'bad girl', because only a middle-aged mother living a second youth through her daughter could conjure up this interpretation of a bad girl. JoJo’s mother exploits her daughter for her own perverse enjoyment (jouissance) and greedily consumes the wealth generated. The Mother’s jouissance is fundamentally narcissistic and destructive, feeding off JoJo’s psychological subjugation.
But let's not misconstrue things here. I'm not pointing fingers at JoJo... she is the consequence of a parent thrusting their child into the limelight before millions of viewers, leaches, and fans, then inducing tears from her daughter for clicks and cash. You've exploited your child! It's these “adults” who have no right to label themselves as such; they're the scavengers feasting on the vitality of their still-breathing children: fuck them, and they ought to stop reproducing for humanity's sake.
These adults, they're the ones who've bought tickets to the self-esteem Olympics. They've spoon-fed her a constant diet of affirmation...the equation is simple: high drama plus rolling cameras equals success. The part JoJo was expected to play, the "dutiful daughter," merely served to enhance her role as the dancing starlet, all for her mother's gratification, a gratification that could only come from societies gaze. Her mother likely rationalized it though, don’t worry, she would never frame herself as the problem: "Everyone knows us, follows us, and just look at how much money we're raking in." Identity upon identity upon identity…an authentic action? Error 404.
The identity morphs into the product and their actions become nothing more than reactions to that identity.
JoJo's mother probably gauges her daughter's goodness by how well the "product" is selling; thus, she validates what sells and feeds her daughter's self-esteem with the mundane reality of a product she herself had pressured her child into becoming.
“Good girl” is good if it sells; “bad girl” is good if it sells.
And JoJo is trapped in the celebrity machine, on a plane of organization dictated by a parasitic gaze, where identities become fixed and hierarchical. She has no access to any plane of consistency, where the self becomes more experimental and open-ended, thus the only connection and assemblages made are those dictated by the demands of the machine of fame and superficial applause.
Enter the artificially assembled bad girl.
Stay curious.
