JoJo Siwa’s time on Celebrity Big Brother UK earlier this year was nothing short of chaos incarnate. Amid a homophobic run-in with Mickey Rourke and a budding flirtation with fellow castmate Chris Hughes, she shared that she realized she’s not a lesbian, despite proudly repping the label for years.
“I think being here, I realize, ‘Oh, I’m not a lesbian, I’m queer,’” Siwa explained at the time. “And I think that’s really cool. I’m switching letters! F*ck the L, I’m going to the Q. That’s what I love about sexuality.”
Now, in a new interview with You Magazine, Siwa clarified her sexuality — she now identifies as queer — and why the lesbian label never truly fit her.
“When I came out at 17, I said: ‘I’m pansexual, because I don’t care [about gender],” Siwa said. “But then I kind of boxed myself in and I said: ‘I’m a lesbian.’ And I think I did that because of pressure.”
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That pressure, she continued, came partially from her fellow queer folks. “In a weird way, I think it came a little bit from inside the [LGBTQ] community at times. From people I know, from partners I’ve had. You just get put in this world where you feel like, because you now have said, ‘Oh, I’m a lesbian,’ you have to be a lesbian. And the truth is, sexuality is fluid.”
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Since Celebrity Big Brother, she and Hughes have entered an official relationship. “I’ll just say that it took time. It took time away and then it took time together,” Siwa said of how she and Hughes made their relationship official. Now, she says, Hughes is “the favorite part of my life.”
Though some folks across the internet are unhappy with Siwa’s new relationship, she says that even her first girlfriend, who she’s still close with, sent her a congratulatory message about her and Hughes after the show ended. “If even she can be supportive of Christopher and me, then there’s no reason others can’t be!” Siwa said.
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