Some days, your idols can let you down. In JoJo Siwa's case, this may or may not have been deserved—but it was very public.
Siwa, whose idol is Miley Cyrus, was the butt of a joke that Cyrus made during a video shown during World Pride in Washington, D.C., recently.
In the video, Cyrus cracked jokes about "coming out of the closet" while being filmed standing in the doorway of what appeared to be a pantry—a closet of sorts. At the end, she went back into the closet—and joked about finding JoJo Siwa inside to "bring her back out."
Here's the clip:
In response to Cyrus' joke, Siwa shared a post on Instagram, discussing her feelings about Cyrus and registering, in a roundabout way, her hurt at Cyrus' comment.
In a lengthy caption, she explained:
"I don’t believe what Miley said at world pride was ill intended, honestly I think it was meant to be a joke, but just not very good one haha."
Because Cyrus and Siwa are both big stars with similar audience profiles, at least by generational cohort, Cyrus' joke and Siwa's response quickly became a whole thing.
People were confused over why Siwa, or her fans, were so annoyed by the joke.
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Many commented on how much it must have impacted Siwa.
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However, the majority of commenters chimed in on both the video of Cyrus' remarks and Siwa's follow-up post, and they weren't very sympathetic to Siwa. Notably, Siwa had "come out" as a lesbian in 2021, but then got together with Chris Hughes, a fellow cast mate on Big Brother UK.
She was, people pointed out, supposedly still dating her girlfriend at the time.
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A vocal minority defended Siwa.
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Siwa took the time to clarify her understanding of her own sexual orientation to E! News.
“I think the most beautiful term now is queer...I think queer is an umbrella of, ‘Look, I'm just me.’ And I think the most beautiful thing about the LGBTQIA community is love is love. And that goes both ways.”
Cyrus had an album drop at the end of May; Siwa has a live tour planned for much of the summer.
