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"About Queen Rania * Worked at Citibank and Apple before marriage. * Met her husband, then a Jordanian prince, at a dinner party in 1993. * Became world&amp;amp;#8217;s youngest queen at age 28. Whew! KATIE COURIC: You&amp;amp;#8217;ve been queen for 10 years [since husband King Abdullah II ascended the throne]. Yet on Twitter you say you&amp;amp;#8217;re just &amp;amp;#8220;a mum and a wife with a really cool day job.&amp;amp;#8221; How hard is it to stay grounded? QUEEN RANIA: The more time goes on, the closer I am to the ground. I&amp;amp;#8217;ve been exposed to so many issues and people living under different pressures. It&amp;amp;#8217;s helped me realize that a lot of glamorous things that people prioritize really don&amp;amp;#8217;t matter. KC: Along with having a Twitter page, you&amp;amp;#8217;re also on YouTube and have won their Visionary Award. Tell me why you&amp;amp;#8217;re on YouTube. QR: Social media is great for social change. Right now, we&amp;amp;#8217;re rallying support for global education with the 1Goal campaign. [Join at join1goal.org.] Seventy-five million children are denied the chance to go to school. By the end of the World Cup [in July], we&amp;amp;#8217;re hoping to have 30 million signatures. Once we tell the world&amp;amp;#8217;s leaders what people want, maybe they&amp;amp;#8217;ll fulfill their pledges on education. It costs $11 billion a year to get all children into school, less than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost in one month. Also, for me, social media is interesting because sometimes it&amp;amp;#8217;s hard to make friends in a position like mine. KC: It&amp;amp;#8217;s not easy being queen? QR: It&amp;amp;#8217;s not easy to make friends, I&amp;amp;#8217;ll tell you that much. Being part of a virtual community is a way to reach out and form friendships. KC: I Tweeted when I took my daughter Ellie to college. I said, I&amp;amp;#8217;m having a hard time. I got so many wonderful responses. QR: You felt less lonely, right? KC: Yeah, it&amp;amp;#8217;s sweet. But there is a flip side. I get an awful lot of nasty messages as well. QR: I get that too! KC: Doesn&amp;amp;#8217;t that upset you? It hurts my feelings. QR: You&amp;amp;#8217;re human. You have to have the discipline to just not read it. If it&amp;amp;#8217;s constructive criticism, fine, but if it&amp;amp;#8217;s just there for the sake of being negative, chuck that out. KC: You&amp;amp;#8217;ve used your YouTube site to dispel Muslim stereotypes. Did you feel that it was effective? QR: I think I&amp;amp;#8217;m getting very frustrated that this kind of discussion is happening only at the top level, between politicians. We need to take it to the level of ordinary people, because at the end of the day the message is that we are the same, that we all care about the same things. It has to be in the day-to-day conversation. KC: What do you think is the biggest misconception about Islam today? QR: That Islam preaches violence. I know the rich heritage of this religion. It preaches tolerance and compassion. KC: How can you explain countries where there&amp;amp;#8217;s strict Islamic law, and women can&amp;amp;#8217;t go out alone or must cover themselves up? Women who see things from this country&amp;amp;#8217;s prism think that&amp;amp;#8217;s unfair. Is there a way to help them understand those customs? QR: First of all, in many Muslim countries women have incredible amounts of freedom, sometimes more than in some countries in Europe. So you cannot just make a generalized statement about women. Second, Islam is not the problem. It&amp;amp;#8217;s tradition. It&amp;amp;#8217;s culture. It&amp;amp;#8217;s age-old mind-sets that need to be changed. KC: Do you consider yourself a feminist? QR: I don&amp;amp;#8217;t know if I&amp;amp;#8217;d put labels on myself, but I do feel that when women are empowered, they have the power to transform society. KC: Glamour reader Susan in Warminster, Pennsylvania, asks, &amp;amp;#8220;How do people in the Middle East really view America?&amp;amp;#8221; QR: Particularly for Jordan, they may not like the politics, but they love the people. One grievance Arabs have is that they feel the United States is biased toward Israel. So one thing that could change the image of the United States is to try to reach a comprehensive settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. KC: Do you have a role model? QR: My role models are people who can do things; I say to myself, &amp;amp;#8220;I wish I could do that.&amp;amp;#8221; KC: Like what? QR: Like women who endure hardships and turn their luck around and bring up children on their own and start a business. Or a social worker who leaves his country, his comfort, his friends, and goes far away to help people he doesn&amp;amp;#8217;t know. I want to evolve into that, ultimately. I want to be that person who could sacrifice everything for others. KC: Do you ever worry that today&amp;amp;#8217;s culture seems to have a certain vulgarity? QR: I feel we do overcelebrate celebrities, but I&amp;amp;#8217;ve found that we have a generation that really wants to make a difference in the world."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/inspired/magazine/2010/01/the-worlds-coolest-queen/2>