Jojo Siwa tells Demi Lovato their 'Cool for the Summer' video was a 'gay awakening' for her
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Just as watching Cruel Intentions helped Demi Lovato realize they liked women, the pop star's own music led JoJo Siwa to her own "gay awakening."
While chatting with the singer and fellow EW cover star on the podcast 4D With Demi Lovato, the 18-year-old star said Lovato's "Cool for the Summer" music video from 2015 and Jenna Dewan both helped her come to terms with her sexuality.
"I've been figuring out my 'gay awakenings' recently," Siwa said. "I think I realized that my very first gay awakening was Jenna Dewan's performance on Lip Sync Battle. I think that was one of them."
She also said she was "a little too interested" after noticing dancer Jojo Gomez in the "Cool for the Summer" video.
Lovato, who revealed they were nonbinary in May and identified using they/them pronouns, told Siwa the song allowed them to introduce their sexuality to the world without explicitly coming out. With suggestive lyrics like "taste for the cherry," in addition to the music video depicting same-sex and straight hookups, the song definitely piqued the public's interest when it debuted.
"When I did 'Cool for the Summer,' that song for me was actually my way of sharing with the world without confirming that I was bisexual. Because like I said, I didn't come out until 2017," Lovato said. "But 'Cool for the Summer' was like 2014, 2015. So that to me, it was my way of saying, 'I'm not ready to come out but...'"
Siwa came out while wearing a "Best Gay Cousin" T-shirt in January, and at that point, she had been dating her girlfriend, Kylie Prew, for nearly a month. But no one except close friends and family knew Siwa was gay, let alone in a relationship.
"'I just did that… Everyone's going to kill me,'" she told EW of what she was thinking at the time. "I was like, 'But I don't care. It'll be fine.' And it was never scary to me to put out to the world that I was happy or I was in love."
She continued: "If everything was to go away because of it, because of me being happy, then it's not meant for me."
Siwa also said she's "finally the happiest that I've ever been."
The couple is still going strong, having celebrated their six-month anniversary last week.
The social star, who is set to lead the film Bounce, said she's also planning on making "gay pop" soon.
"About a year ago, I started having all these music meetings just for fun, just getting my head where I want to go," she told EW. "And I told all these producers, 'I want to create gay pop, and I want to have a concert for the girls and for the gays.' Turns out a year later, I am very much so gay."
Like Lovato before her, Siwa's music could then help other questioning teens discover their sexuality, and on and on.
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