Steve Harvey’s Twin Daughters Brandi & Karli Share Messages Of Style & Self Esteem
How does fashion play a part in these girls achieving their dreams?
Karli: Man, because image is everything. When you step foot out of the house, you have the ability to make a great first impression. Whether it’s on your employer, on your teacher, your friends, whatever it is, you can make a great first impression. And it starts with how you look. You only get one chance to make a first impression, one opportunity. There are no do-overs. So, if you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready.
Brandi: And we tell our girls that people address you by the way you are dressed. You can’t expect people to treat you like the First Lady and you dress like Nicki Minaj. It just doesn’t work. Those two things don’t go hand in hand. We always say that in our presentation, so it makes the correlation in their minds that, you know what, I set my standard. And if you set the standard, people have to come up to reach that. You’re not going to bring yourself down to get on their level. You want to set a standard and people need to reach your level.
I noticed that the girls were rallying around you after your presentation. So, what makes the girls so receptive to the delivery of your message?
Brandi: We’re transparent. We are real. What you see is what you get. We tell a lot of our stories about growing up and we keep it real with the girls to let them know, I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I know. We’re not ashamed to tell the story. And I think that’s what people get because game recognize game, real recognizes real. They can relate to us because we relate to them. We don’t try to hide the fact that we’ve done things that weren’t right, we’ve said things that probably weren’t right.
We tell them that as a teaching tool. You can not heal girls if you’re not going to be real enough to tell the story and that’s our mission to heal these girls, to change their lives, to inspire them. To let them know I’m not any different than you.
Karli: When we were teenagers our mom always told us that we were great, ‘oh you’re beautiful.’ But when we went to school, kids weren’t as kind. Kids talked about us, they said we were ugly. Our noses are too big, your smile is too wide. Your teeth are too big. You just not cute. And it hurt us when we were younger. And so now, we’ve built up the confidence just within ourselves. Because we started to believe that we were great that we were beautiful and no matter what people said about us, what they thought, felt or believed about us, we knew who we were. And I think now, why we can reach so many girls and our message can translate is because we’ve been there. We’ve been called the ugly duckling. Even though we didn’t– ‘Dang! I’m ugly, really? I thought I was cute…’
Brandi: I thought I was cute today.
Karli: But we got talked about. We got told that we weren’t good enough. So, all we want to do is tell these girls that they are good enough, that they are special enough, that they are pretty enough, that they are worthy enough.
Brandi: That you are enough all by yourself.
Karli: And so being a teenager and knowing what it feels like to be called ugly, to have people talk about your image and how you felt. Like, I thought I looked good but they spoke otherwise. And so just reinforcing the point that they’re wonderful just the way they are.
Brandi: That’s it. That they’re all right just the way they are.
You can check out Karli Harvey on Twitter @KmHarvey and you can follow Brandi @YoungFitandFly.
More interviews with celebrities and the student participants to come. To learn more about Disney Dreamers Academy, check out the website here.
