News

Actions

U of U student, Taylor Swift look-alike, talks about bullying on Steve Harvey show

Posted at 1:18 PM, Mar 02, 2016
and last updated 2016-03-04 09:08:15-05

University of Utah student Keitra Jane Calaway is often told she looks like singer Taylor Swift.

So when she won a look-a-like contest to be cast in a music video with singer Alex Boye she was excited.

She was the featured guest in the music video “African Hipster” released online in January.

But once the views started racking up and the comments poured in, she realized not everyone was nice about it.

Recently, on a special anti-bullying episode of the Steve Harvey talk showshe said, “A lot of people left some really nice comments and then there was a couple of not nice comments.”

“People would say things like, ‘She’s a fatter version of Taylor Swift,’ or ‘If Taylor Swift gained 20 pounds,’ or just things along those lines,” Calaway said.

She said she struggled with an eating disorder in the past and the comments hurt her.

Calaway asked Harvey how “we can encourage kids to be kinder to one another?”

He responded with, “I don’t know how to make kids be kinder to one another,” and talked about how social media has given people a voice.

“What you’ve got to remember is, that voice didn’t make you, that voice didn’t create you, that voice doesn’t sustain you,” he said. “That voice has nothing to do with any future blessings, that voice is null and void. I don’t give power to the voice.”

He went on to share what he went through after his social media debacle after the Miss Universe Pageant where he mistakenly crowned the wrong winner.

Harvey said he was called every single word imaginable and what he’s learned is all adversity carries a lesson and blessing.

“Behind every moment of adversity in my life, there is a lesson and a blessing,” Harvey said.

After the Miss Universe mistake, he landed a Super Bowl commercial with T-Mobile.

Calaway posted this to her Facebook page after the segment aired saying she wishes more people would understand “we are all children of God.”