Malala Yousafzai has shared her own take on Barbie and Ken as she and husband Asser Malik posed in one of the popular movie-themed photobooths available in cinemas across the world.
The Pakistani education activist, 26, posted a photo of her and Malik, 27, standing in life-sized Barbie packaging and joked: “This Barbie has a Nobel Prize [sparkly heart emoji]. He’s just Ken.”
In 2014, Yousafzai became the world’s youngest Nobel Prize laureate at the age of 17. She received the accolade for her work in advocating for education for women and children in her native homeland, Swat, where the Taliban banned girls from attending school.
Malik, who works for the Pakistan Cricket Board as their high-performance general manager, took it in his stride and replied to his wife’s tweet: “I’m Kenough [cry-laugh emoji].”
The word “Kenough” is a reference to the recently released Barbie movie, directed by Greta Gerwig, and is a play on the character of Ken (Ryan Gosling) and the word “enough”.
In the photograph, Yousafzai wears an all-pink shalwar kameez, the national dress of Pakistan, and a matching pink headscarf, while Malik wore a dark blazer over a white T-shirt as he smiled and put his arm around Yousafzai.
Fans found the post hilarious, with many praising the couple’s sense of humour.
“You are the coolest there is! That caption is everything,” one person wrote.
Another said Yousafzai was “iconic” and displayed “queen energy” for the post, while a third added: “This is one of the best things I’ve seen! Brilliant Malala.”
“End this trend. We have a (Nobel) winner!” another declared.
Earlier this month, the entrepreneur shared a sweet post celebrating Yousafzai’s 26th birthday and posted a photo of the couple hugging one another.
He wrote on Instagram: “Happy Birthday, Malala. You don’t need any reminders of how amazing you are. But for what it’s worth, you are the best partner I could have ever hoped for.”
Yousafzai and Malik married in November 2021, despite the human rights activist previously saying she did not want to get married “at least until [she was] 35”. They tied the knot in a small ceremony in Birmingham.
Malala Yousafzai and Asser Malik attends the 2023 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 12, 2023— (Getty Images for Vanity Fair)
Following their wedding, Yousafzai faced critics who accused her of being a hypocrite because of a comment she made to British Vogue earlier that same year. She said at the time that she did not “understand” why people got married, adding: “If you want to have a person in your life, why do you have to sign marriage papers, why can’t it just be a partnership?”
In an appearance on The Andrew Marr Show, she responded to the backlash and said: “I was not against marriage, I had concerns about marriage and that is true for many girls around the world who have seen reports about child marriage and reports about forced marriage.”
She said people should question why there is a power imbalance in marriages where “women make more compromises than men”, adding: “A lot of these customs are influenced by patriarchy and misogyny”.
“So you have to question the systems that we are living in and we have to question the status quo but I am lucky that I found a person who understands my values,” she added. “He understands my sense of humour and we have a lot in common.”
In an essay for British Vogue, she said that Asser has “helped me consider how I could have a relationship – a marriage – and remain true to my values of equality, fairness and integrity”.
