Arise, Malala and Greta: our Gen Z superheroines

Yesterday, the stars aligned and the nation’s collective hearts soared on seeing the inception of the ultimate friendship. Climate campaigner and Gen-Z saviour Greta Thunberg — who was on route to join a school strike in Bristol — stopped off to pay a visit to 2014 Nobel Peace Prize-winner and global women’s education activist, Malala Yousafzai, not that these two even need surnames at this point. Meeting at Oxford’s Lady Margaret Hall, where Malala is a student — what better location to form a lifelong friendship than university — college principal Alan Rusbridger says Greta spoke to students about “science, voting, the limits of protest and much more” although it’s unknown what her and Malala discussed privately — hopefully activism, Malala’s uni life and the ways in which they will continue to save the world.

Although it was only their first face-to-face meeting, the two young powerhouses must of course be familiar with each other’s work. In a recent Teen Vogue interview, Yousafzai was quick to applaud Greta’s activism alongside the likes of gun control campaigner Emma Gonzalez.

Certainly, it was a serious love-in. “She’s the only friend I’d skip school for” quipped Malala on Instagram

“So... today I met my role model. What else can I say?” reads Thunberg’s caption.

Meeting at uni, celebrating each other’s successes, cracking jokes; Malala and Greta have already set the foundations for an unbeatable friendship. Seventeen-year-old Greta Thunberg has brought the climate crisis into global consciousness, sometimes it feels almost single-handedly. She’s confronted politicians, changed policy and through grass-roots action created a powerful butterfly effect.

Meanwhile, at just 22, Malala has been a champion for women’s rights since 2008 when she wrote about the Taliban’s growing influence in Pakistan. She was only fourteen when she was shot after calling for better education for women, yet undeterred by the warnings and death threats, in the years that followed, she’s continued to campaign, written a best-selling memoir and becoming the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate in history.

While Greta and Malala’s meeting may have been a one off, we can’t help but get carried away. In standing up for major global issues — the climate crisis and women’s education respectively — both have achieved unprecedented changes; but put them together, and there’s surely there’s no limit to what #Grelala can achieve.