Few celebrities have had their personal lives dissected in quite as many TikTok duets and comment threads this year.
JoJo Siwa got candid about her sexuality in a new video with Dancing With the Stars pro Ezra Sosa, who noted backstage at the recent DWTS Con that he thought Siwa "was lesbian, but is clearly not anymore." "She was," Siwa responded in their July 31 TikTok, "by the way."
That quick exchange, casual as it looked, opened a fresh round of discourse about the 23-year-old's identity timeline. The conversation echoed comments Siwa has shared before about how she viewed her identity, often describing herself as gay instead of using the label lesbian after coming out in 2021.
Siwa believes she was "boxed" into the term early on. "I did that because of the pressure," she told the Daily Mail in 2025. "In a weird way, I think it came a little bit from inside the 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."
Her perspective shifted after Celebrity Big Brother UK. When Siwa entered the house in April 2025, she was openly dating non-binary Australian influencer Kath Ebbs. Chris Hughes, known to British audiences from Love Island, was just another contestant. Their bond deepened after fellow castmate Mickey Rourke made a homophobic comment, saying he was "going to vote the lesbian out real quick." Hughes told him he could "not say that," Siwa called the remark out, and Rourke was subsequently sent home for inappropriate behavior.
What started as solidarity became something else. Initially, after filming wrapped, Siwa described their relationship as "platonic" during a joint appearance on This Morning. By June 2025, however, she told The Guardian that their bond "isn't platonic anymore," adding she was "absolutely head over heels."
Ebbs confirmed their split from Siwa after the Celebrity Big Brother finale. During an appearance on Hot Goss, Siwa said, "Coming out dating a man, for me, ended up getting more scrutiny than coming out dating a girl."
That scrutiny hasn't let up. Online, the conversation tends to split sharply between fans who celebrate her fluidity and critics who accuse her of abandoning the identity she once championed. Speaking on SiriusXM's Smith Sisters Live show last September, Siwa clarified that being in a relationship with a man "does not mean I'm straight."
"I think the most beautiful term now is queer," she exclusively told E! News' Francesca Amiker. "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."
"The truth is," Siwa has emphasized, "sexuality is fluid." Meeting Hughes, now 33, helped her realize the degree of that fluidity. She told the Reign With Josh Smith podcast that she saw herself as an "example of somebody who is in the queer community that is in a heterosexual relationship."
In an April 2026 interview with Us Weekly, Siwa laid it out plainly: "I clearly am not a straight human being. I could never say that I'm straight. Am I in a straight relationship? Yes. Am I in love with a man? Yes! Do I want to spend the rest of my life with him? Absolutely. But does that discredit my past? Absolutely not. Zero."
The couple, for their part, seem settled. They celebrated their one-year dating anniversary in April 2026. Hughes has spoken about feeling a "magical" pull from the beginning and told The Sun's Fabulous Magazine he would love to marry Siwa one day. He also shut down any notion of Siwa proposing to him, telling interviewers that being proposed to would "make me really uncomfortable."
Siwa's trajectory is hard to map onto a neat arc. She went from Nickelodeon kid to Dance Moms breakout to pop provocateur with Karma, coming out publicly at 17 and spending the next several years navigating labels in real time while millions watched. She has reflected on first coming out at that age and emphasized that her experiences, including past relationships with women and nonbinary people, remain a core part of who she is.
Whether the Sosa TikTok clip fades or becomes another flashpoint, it's clear the conversation around Siwa's identity isn't winding down. Each new statement generates its own cycle of takes. For Siwa, the message has stayed consistent even as the labels have changed: she gets to decide.
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