Amal Clooney Vogue cover controversy: what’s wrong with saying she's a mother?

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What’s wrong with saying Amal Clooney is a mother?
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Kerry Parnell
April 14, 2018 7:00pm


WHAT’S wrong with referring to a woman as a mother?
Everything, if you listen to rants about Amal Clooney’s Vogue cover.

The amazing Amal, who appears on the cover of US Vogue, and is one of the best female role models in the world, has given an interview about her work, home and relationship.
The cover line the fashion magazine used to accompany her image reads “Lawyer, activist, mother of twins, free-speech crusader.”

But the sisterhood thinks this should be censored, deleting the ‘mother’ part, arguing it’s sexist to say she’s a new mum to two 10-month-olds, with husband George Clooney.

Now I am all for equality, but aren’t we getting a little bit mixed up here? What’s wrong with mentioning someone is a mother as well as her career? Are we to delete that part of being a woman?

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We are in a period of immense social change, with the #MeToo and equal pay movements doing more for women’s rights since emancipation, but there’s also confusion. The sisterhood says women should not be objectified — unless they want to plaster their arses on Instagram in a G-string, that is. We should support each other — unless you have a differing opinion. And now we shouldn’t talk about being a mother? Come on.

In the Vogue interview Amal speaks extensively about her career. She also says at 35, she had given up on romance when she met George. He echoed the sentiment, saying, “I’d pretty much committed to the idea of never marrying again. But I started dating Amal, and I immediately knew that something was very different.”

So for both of these exceptional people to have met, married and become parents when neither of them expected they would, is cause for celebration.

They appear blissfully happy — George FaceTimes while the interviewer is there, on his first trip away from his kids and misses them acutely, like any new dad.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Before meeting each other, George and Amal had given up on the idea of romance and family, so we should celebrate their love story. (Pic: Joel Ryan)

It’s lovely. It’s real life. It’s the stuff we should be talking about.

We’re so quick to put each other into boxes. Why can’t Amal be a world-famous lawyer and a wonderful mother? Why aren’t both OK?

She’s also extremely glamorous and into fashion, co-chairing the Met Gala next month. Is that allowed too, or should she put her Manolos away if she wants to be taken seriously?

If there really is a sisterhood, it needs to support all women, not just the ones who conform to a club.

“I hate the idea that you somehow, as a human being, have to be put in a box,” Amal says. “There’s no reason why lawyers can’t be fun — or actresses can’t be serious.”

Quite. I remember once, when I was editing a fashion magazine, being introduced to an earnest female barrister who, on inquiring what I did for a living, smirked and said, “Oh you write about what colour lipstick we should be wearing,” as if I, and the magazine’s hundreds of thousands of readers, were monumental morons.

Real equality comes when we let women — and men — be whatever they want to be, without judgment. Glamorous lipstick-loving lawyers, glass-ceiling-shattering career women or stay-at-home mums. Whatever. Who cares.
And a mother? Shout it from the damn rooftops if you want.