JoJo Siwa credits her ‘wonderful, perfect’ girlfriend for supporting her recent coming out

Coming out is scary, especially when you’re just 17 and facing the prospect of your 32 million TikTok followers weighing in with their reactions. But Jojo Siwa of Masked Singer, Dance Moms, and YouTube fame recently did it anyway, supported, she says, by her “amazing, wonderful, perfect” girlfriend. Siwa has spent weeks dropping hints that she might be part of the LGBTQ+ community, teasing fans that she was on the verge of sharing something major about her personal life.

Last night she virtually joined Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show to explain, saying that she had expected her recent appearance in a TikTok video from the Pride House collective of creators to spark some questions about her sexuality.  “There's always been speculation,” she said, “but I was like, ‘I think this is gonna out me.’"

For Siwa, it was a big step — one she felt she was ready for. "I was like, 'I don't really mind, it is true.' I do have the most amazing, wonderful, perfect, most beautiful girlfriend in the whole world. It's not something I'm ashamed of, I just haven't shown the internet yet,” she said, ahead of the long-distance dance battle that pitted her against the late night host.

Already an LGBTQ+ icon (see: Canada’s Drag Race, Season One, Snatch Game), Siwa continued dropping hints over the next few days as her fans celebrated her possible coming out. A video showing her dancing to Lady Gaga’s anthemic ‘Born This Way’ was followed by an Instagram post featuring Siwa sporting a ‘Best Gay Cousin Ever’ t-shirt. "I was on FaceTime with my girlfriend,” she said, “and we were just talking about all the love that came in [following the Pride House video], and we were both like, technically I still haven't confirmed it. I was like, I kind of just want to post this picture."

Siwa told Fallon that her girlfriend was “super encouraging” which helped ease her fears about coming out to millions of people. "Of course not everybody in the world is going to accept it right now, but there are so many people who are going to accept it right now," she explained. "And like I say, even if there's a million people that don't accept it, there's a hundred million that do."

Saying that she knew her coming out posed possible risks for her career, Siwa, one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020, said, “If I lost everything that I've created because of being myself and because of loving who I want to love, I don't want it. That's not what I want if I can't love who I want to love, that's one of the most important things to me."

BEFORE YOU GO: Country star T.J. Osborne comes out

[video_embed id='2132793']BEFORE YOU GO: Country star T.J. Osborne comes out[/video_embed]