Shot-in-the head while sitting on her school-bus in 2012, Taliban gunman survivor Malala Yousafzai was among the British GQ Heroes 2025 honored in early July. AOC notes that Brunello Cucinelli was also among the artists, activists and radical thinkers at the two-day event and on the cover of British GQ’s special issue. We must track him down.

One look at Malala’s photos and Anne said: ‘Porodina.’ AOC has followed Malala from the day she was shot, and I’ve never seen her look so poetically beautiful. And grownup as a married 27-year-old women.

Dena Giannini styles Malala in Anneli Tammik, A.W.A.K.E. MODE, Gareth Pugh, Malala in Critter, Harris Reed, Haute Hijab, Marni, Panconesi, Richard Quinn, Rick Owens, Robert Wun, Simone Rocha and more./ Hair by Anna Cofone; makeup by Laura Doominique

Malala’s Wit

The folks at Apple TV, including CEO Tim Cook, will tell you that Malala has great wit and it’s not always subtle in her delivery. Malala herself will tell you that she would like to be a comedian if the world wasn’t in such constant need of her activism.

GQ’s interview by Adam Baidawi launches on a private practice golf range an hour southeast of London. And she is giving him instructions.

“Keep your head down,” Yousafzai says. “Keep it in that exact position.”
I obey. Iron and Callaway make a miraculous connection.
WHOOOSH – thwack?!
“That is incredible,” she says. It will be my only good shot of the day.

Malala is “in full regalia — performance-fabric zip-up, tailored golf trousers, Lululemon cap. She’s coaching, laughing, gently boasting.” Just so Giannini is clear: Yousafzai is not humble about her golf game. “I’m humble in everything else… but when it comes to golf, I talk about it.”

Baidawi is an Australian writer, editor and photographer, currently Deputy Global Editorial Director at GQ and Head of Editorial Content for British GQ. His writing is so engaging; I love it.

Malala Picks Up a Golf Club

He writes so vividly that we feel Malala’s jaw closing in on her health bar. Early in her relationship with now husband Asser Malik, formerly with the Pakistani cricket board, he was playing golf with a friend on the Isle of Islay.

Putting her book aside, watching Malik struggle with his shots, she got bored and joined the two men. “Asser was trying – and the ball was going to the left, to the right,” she says, and he assured her it wasn’t so easy to shoot it straight. By now you know that Malala picked up her golf club and hit the ball straight-away.

Today the couple is launching an investment platform centered on women’s sport.

The Uncomfortable Truths for Activists

Much of the interview is devoted to all the back-sliding happening around the world on women’s rights — and especially in Afghanistan, where Malala is deeply involved in girl’s education. And how activism has gone lukewarm in many countries around the world.

Badawai asks a critical question:

What’s an uncomfortable truth about the work that you do?
She takes a long pause and lets out a gentle laugh. “I was gonna say many. The nature of this work is such that it requires patience and impatience at the same time, and I have learned to live with that,” she says. “I always have this sense of urgency inside me. Every day, it feels like we failed, every day it feels like yet another day a girl is out of school in Afghanistan. Yet another day that 120 million girls [worldwide] remain out of school. But at the same time, it’s this patience. You know, this is how much I can do today. This is how much I can do tomorrow. This is how much I can do the day after, so that we can maybe change something.”

Like Amal Clooney, Malala is criticized for every little thing. Why in goddesses’ name did she work with Hillary Clinton on the Broadway musical ‘Suffs’, which premiered in April 2024. The musical depicted the American women’s suffrage campaign for the right to vote.

"Her theatre collaboration with Hillary Clinton — who stands for America's unequivocal support for genocide of Palestinians — is a huge blow to her credibility as a human rights activist," popular Pakistani columnist Mehr Tarar wrote on social media platform X.

Author and academic Dr. Nida Kirmani, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Lahore University, said on X that Yousafzai's decision to partner with Clinton was "maddening and heartbreaking at the same time. What an utter disappointment."

Returning to Amal Clooney, Baidawi explains:

The purity tests are unforgiving. Amal Clooney spent months being pilloried for her supposed silence on Gaza – until she surfaced from actual, real-live work advising the ICC on the arrest warrants for Hamas leaders, for Israel’s former defence minister, and for Netanyahu. “My approach is not to provide a running commentary of my work,” Clooney wrote in a statement, “But to let the work speak for itself.”

Yousafzai handles her situation with similar aplomb, admitting that she’s simultaneously accused of being a CIA asset, a Zionist agent and a terror sympathiser.

“Yeah, sometimes I feel like I’m working for all the agencies,” she deadpans. “Even they might be confused.”

This is an excellent interview beginning to end. Superbly well-written and highly engaging.