Malala Yousafzai, the 23-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner from Pakistan, has been featured on the British Vogue magazine cover in the July issue. Taking to social media, Malala stated that she was thrilled and humbled to be on the cover page of Vogue.
She tweeted, “I know the power that a young girl carries in her heart when she has a vision and a mission – and I hope that every girl who sees this cover will know that she can change the world.”
Speaking to Vogue, Malala, who graduated from Oxford University last year, said going to university finally gave her some time for herself and also added that she was excited about everything – including eating McDonald's and playing poker.
She said she had “never really been in the company of people my own age because I was recovering from the incident, and travelling around the world, publishing a book and doing a documentary, and so many things were happening.”
Malala, who became the youngest-ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, as an activist for girls to have the universal right to education, said that she did not write anything about the award on her personal statement for Oxford.
“I felt a bit embarrassed,” she said.
In the interview, Malala also revealed that her fame affected her schooling in Birmingham. She said that it was awkward for her when people would often come up to her and ask, “What was it like when you met Emma Watson, or Angelina Jolie or Obama?”
“And I wouldn’t know what to say. It’s awkward, because you want to leave that Malala outside the school building, you want to just be a student and a friend.”Malala Yousafzai
The activist also spoke about her close friendship with other young activists, saying that environmental activist Greta Thunberg texts her for advice.
“I know the power that a young girl carries in her heart when she has a vision and a mission,” she said.
Speaking to Vogue, Malala also said that she does not wear a headscarf because she is “oppressed” but rather as a representation of her cultural roots.
“Muslim girls or Pashtun girls or Pakistani girls, when we follow our traditional dress, we're considered to be oppressed, or voiceless, or living under patriarchy. I want to tell everyone that you can have your own voice within your culture, and you can have equality in your culture,” Malala told Vogue.
Who is Malala?
The world’s youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Malala was born and raised in Swat Valley in Pakistan, which fell into Taliban control in 2008. Malala’s early schooling was marred by the hardline Islamist group’s efforts to ban education for girls.
Malala became the face of Taliban brutality when she was shot in the head for going to school in the Swat valley. On 9 October 2012 an armed Taliban militant boarded the bus that Malala was on and shot her in the head.
Currently, she resides in Birmingham with her family, having moved there after the attempted assassination.
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