You've Gotta See it to Believe it

Why the stories kids see matter

As a young Sikh kid in the 80’s and 90’s, I rarely saw people like me in the books I read, shows I watched, or ads I saw.  The early ‘00s weren’t much better.  

And after 9/11, the dream of seeing a turban-wearing person cast in a positive light felt further away than ever.  

This lack of representation made it hard to imagine myself as the central figure of any story, including my own.  There was a fixed narrative for people like me—and “star” wasn’t any part of it.

As the writer Chimamanda Adichie says in her TED talk on “The Danger of a Single Story”:

“Show someone as one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.”

Put another way:  if people like you are always portrayed negatively, it’s easy to see how people have a negative association with you- including yourself.   

But I was lucky.  

Because my parents told me the stories I didn’t get elsewhere- how my grandfather helped start the Indian Air Force; how Sikhs bravely helped lead the Indian independence movement; and how South Asians were becoming leaders in the industries of the future.

They understood that before you can achieve success, you have to be able to see it.  And if I couldn’t find the story I wanted to read, I might just need to write it myself.

Luckily, I wasn’t the only one who felt rewriting narratives was important. 

In 2007, Kenneth Cole put out a nationwide casting call for a turban-wearing model to star in their 25th-anniversary campaign.  I’m not sure anyone (except my mom!) thought my being a fashion model was possible at that specific, polarized time (if ever).  I’d just signed up for Facebook, so I submitted my new profile picture.  The next thing I knew,  my nose was being powdered by a make-up artist named Rosie at Milk Studios in downtown NYC, and I was doing my best blue steel in front of Terry Richardson, a celebrity fashion photographer. 

My mom, my #1 fan 😂

When the Kenneth Cole campaign launched, it made headlines around the world. It wasn’t just my life that was changed when the photo was featured in malls across the country. To this day, South Asians approach me to tell me how, as a kid, seeing someone like them positively portrayed meant something to them.  That my picture helped them dream bigger, and that my story helped them rewrite their own.

Research supports this idea.

Albert Bandura was a Stanford professor, psychologist, and pioneer of self-efficacy—how people come to believe in themselves.  He studied how (1) hearing about your potential, and (2) seeing the success / failure of people like you impacts belief in yourself.  

His research indicates that the stories we hear aren’t just a fun way to learn—they can be a huge part of how you come to believe in yourself.   

Today, I’m no longer a model- I’m an entrepreneur and dad of three young kids, who thinks a lot about how to help kids become the best versions of themselves. 

As a family, we try to tell our kids stories where they’re the hero.  As an entrepreneur, my goal is to make that easy for everyone.  That’s why stories are a big part of what we’re building at Legends. 

New technology enables us to do this easily.  

One of the first AI demos we built internally, called Visualizer (try it here), uses generative AI to make kids the main characters of the story, so they can see themselves overcoming obstacles in their real lives alongside their family and friends.

While it’s not perfect, tools like Visualizer are a step in the right direction.  Seeing themselves as the main character in a story isn’t just helpful, it’s fun.  They’re not just reading- they’re laughing and smiling.  

The other night,  when my son made a story where he was a basketball star, I saw him feel something powerful.  It’s the same way I felt when my parents told me about my grandfather and the same thing I see when South Asian strangers approach me from across a room.  

It was a look of not just recognition, but hope and possibility.  

And for a kid, that’s the most valuable thing of all.