How Many Bows Does JoJo Siwa Own, and Where Can You Buy One for Yourself?
If you’re an adult, you may not know who JoJo Siwa is. But if you’re a 7-year-old girl, you definitely do. Over the past couple of years, the 15-year-old Siwa has gone from Dance Moms cast member to viral star. Her YouTube channel has nearly 9 million subscribers. Close to 8 million people – known as “Siwanators” — follow her on Instagram.
Siwa’s released a platinum-selling single (“Boomerang”), written a best-selling book (JoJo’s Guide to the Sweet Life: #PeaceOutHaterz), and will embark on a nationwide tour this spring. Whatever she’s doing, you can bet she’ll be wearing one of her brightly colored outfits and have her signature big bow perched atop her tight side ponytail.
JoJo has more than 1,000 bows
In a video from early 2018, JoJo estimated that she had at least 1,000 bows. She’s rarely – if ever – seen without one. But according to Siwa, they’re more than just a fashion accessory. The bows are “a symbol of power, confidence, believing-ness.”
Siwa has said that fans often ask if it’s in her contract to wear a bow everyday, but she’s says that’s not the case. She just likes the style.
Her bows are a hot item
Siwa has turned her social media following into a retail empire. Fans can buy JoJo T-shirts, toys, shoes, and more. But her most popular item is without a doubt her bows. She’s sold 35 million of them since Claire’s stores first started stocking them. Now, the hair accessories are sold at Walmart, Target, Justice, and other stores.
The bows aren’t exactly cheap. The normal retail price for a official JoJo bow at Claire’s is $16.99. The bows sold at Target cost $7.99.
According to Siwa, wearing a bow is a way to signal that “you’re strong, you’re powerful, you stand up to the bullies.”
“If you’re a Siwanator, you’re nice,” she told Ad Age. “And the way you can tell if someone is a Siwanator is if they have a JoJo bow in. So if you’re sitting at recess at school and someone is not being nice to you but you see another kid who has a JoJo bow in, you can go hang out with them and they’ll be nice to you because they’re a Siwanator.”
But the bows are also controversial
At some schools, however, the bows have been the cause of bullying, rather than preventing it. Some schools in the U.K. banned the massive bows because they didn’t comply with uniform rules, were distracting, and led to some kids being teased if they didn’t have the latest bows or had knock-off versions, according to a report from the Telegraph.
Despite the bans, the JoJo bow trend doesn’t show any sign of slowing down.
“JoJo bows are an insane phenomenon,” Claire Low the editor of the Australian tween magazine Total Girl told the Sydney Morning Herald. “She’s taken something simple and fairly widespread – hair bows, specifically, the cheerleader type of bow – and managed to turn this into an empire.”
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