JoJo Siwa has taken over our home, but I am staging a fightback | Emma Brockes

I have a cunning plan to overcome my five-year-olds’ obsesssion with the big-bowed YouTuber

In what now looks like a state of prelapsarian innocence, I hadn’t heard of Joelle Joanie Siwa – or JoJo Siwa, as the five-year-olds know her – until my daughter asked for her on Alexa a few months ago. “Play JoJo Siwa,” she said, and has been saying ever since. At my kids’ birthday party in January, they received JoJo Siwa-branded diaries and accessories. In the local pharmacy, there is a whole rack of JoJo Siwa hair guff next to the milk. This week there was a book fair at their school, where you’d think you’d be safe, but no. In among the volumes of Pete the Cat and shark books, there she was – JoJo & Bow Bow: The Posh Puppy Pageant, one of a series of books “written” by Siwa.

There are worse kids’ internet phenomena out there, but the breadth of the Siwa franchise, and the glittery hold she has on kindergarten-age girls, makes her one of the most annoying. Siwa, who is 16 and comes from Nebraska, sprang to fame on the back of the Lifetime TV show Dance Moms. But it was her YouTube channel, JoJo Siwa vlogs, that launched her pop career and everything that came afterwards: a 52-city US tour, endless spinoffs, and her presence in our house every day.

Related: Parents are exploiting their children on YouTube for fame and easy money | Emma Brockes

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from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2SOdEHU