"It was 6am. London. A few days before Christmas. My four-year-old is singing at the top of her lungs and charging around my parents' house on a hunt for the perfect crayon. There is nothing particularly unusual about this scene except for the fact that the crayon in question was for Greta Thunberg. The world's most well-known activist needed a writing tool and my daughter, O, was on the case."
"When the visit had been hastily arranged by a friend of a friend of my sister a couple days earlier, we'd tried to explain to O that Greta was a famous activist who tried to help people and the environment. Does famous mean beautiful? my princess-obsessed child asked. Oh dear, I thought, I have failed as a parent and a feminist. No, it doesn't. And remember being beautiful is not important what's important is being kind, I said, trying to redeem some feminist points."
A four-year-old searched the house for a crayon meant for Greta Thunberg during an early-morning visit in London a few days before Christmas. Greta had come to support Palestine Action-linked hunger strikers and needed somewhere to stay; the child's grandfather, a Palestinian refugee, keeps an open house for activists. The family explained Greta's fame to the child, who equated famous with beautiful, prompting a parental correction that kindness matters more than beauty. The child's habitual retort, "How dare you!", reappeared despite warnings. The Palestine-linked hunger strikers receive little mainstream attention.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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