Do you remember when George Clooney first met human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin (now Clooney)? The feminist internet was up in arms at the Daily Mail (et al) referring to her as “Clooney’s girlfriend” and, later, “Clooney’s wife”, and myriad pithy thinkpieces emerged pointing out that, actually, the power disparity should have tilted in her favour, rather than his.
“Amal Alamuddin, a 36 year old London-based dual-qualified English barrister and New York litigation attorney who has long been a high-profile figure in international refugee and human rights law has gone against the trend for professional women in her field and married… an actor,” wrote Karla Pincott over on The Business Woman.
A decade later, according to The Cut, “Amal was one of eight experts who published a review of the International Criminal Court’s investigation into war crimes committed by both Hamas and Israeli officials”, and it seems as though George might still be a bit salty about being put in the ha’penny place.
So determined is he to show the world who wears the Versace pants in his relationship, Georgie called up none other than Joe Biden (yes, the President of the United States of America) to defend his better half, after Biden called the ICC warrant for the arrest of Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes “outrageous”.
Sadly, Biden was busy – too busy for Georgie?! Inconceivable! – but he did have a little chat with Steve Richetti, one of Biden’s top aides, apparently stoking concern among Biden’s team that he might back out of a campaign fundraiser he’s agreed to participate in later this month, alongside Julia Roberts and Barack Obama. “Be nice to my wife or I’m not coming to your party!” he is alleged* to have said. (*by me. Alleged by me)
This next part is going to be shocking, so you might want to make sure you’re sitting down as you read on: George Clooney is not the only man in history to take it upon himself to get involved in his wife (slash-partner-slash-girlfriend)’s business, in the name of defending her work, honour, or reputation.
Oh, no: men, you see, are all the exact same (except Robin Williams and Michael D Higgins, angels, both of them) and simply cannot resist when presented with the opportunity to shake out their tail feathers and make a bit of a scene.
Come with me, if you will, on a little stroll down memory lane – not to be confused with Moanery Lane, my new series on, well, things that are driving me mad, topic suggestions welcome – to the year 2015, when I was living my best life, working as deputy editor of STELLAR magazine and trolling Irish influencers in my spare time.
It was a period in which I was an avid reader of any and all boards.ie threads that were dedicated to bloggers. For the uninitiated, boards.ie was then (and is now) an online forum a little like Reddit, but Irish and – at least in my experience – more closely moderated.
For example, in those days, anything deemed to be defamatory or speculative was removed; similarly, posters didn’t get away with accusing influencers they followed of “stealing” ideas, or of neglecting their children. Anything that even vaguely nodded to the possibility of a crime was moderated away immediately; Tattle.Life, it was not.
One particular day, I spotted a chat on an Irish influencers forum – as far as I can remember, the threads dedicated to bloggers, influencers and Snapchatters were more generalised than you’d see today, so for example there was a thread for “Irish fashion influencers”, and maybe another for “Irish beauty YouTube” – about which influencers and content creators were the most and least likely to respond to their followers.
Some never responded to anyone, which was deemed incredibly rude and ungrateful; others replied to everyone, which of course earned them brownie points galore.
But it was one that didn’t name the blogger in question that piqued my interest; this poster talked about how they had messaged an Irish influencer to suggest that they reserve their effusive praise for a particular skin cream until they’d used the product for more than one day. “How dare you tell me how to run my account?” came the response, followed by the swift blocking of said follower who had, by their own telling, been nothing but supportive of said influencer up to that point, sending her multiple DMs admiring her clothes, her makeup, asking for links and so on.
This will shock you almost as much as the earlier revelation that all men are eejits, but: I used to be quite the rabble-rouser, and immediately shared this post to my Facebook page. “Blind item!” I wrote. “Which Irish blogger is this about?”
Then – and here’s my mistake, folks – I got on a train across the country, I think going to Cork for some hotel freebie or another (those were the days etc), thus entering a veritable black hole of signal and connectivity and catching only snippets of the responses to said post as I hurtled across the country.
But in the name of full disclosure: I did catch several responses in which the blogger was named, with people sharing their own dealings with her. “That’s obviously [redacted] – she’s notorious for replies like this!” was the kind of response people were sharing.
I felt a kind of gleeful sense of mischief at the whole thing, and while I’ll admit there was a modicum of guilt sparking somewhere deep within my brain (very deep, far down, almost undetectably so), I also just felt like, well… if you’re going to send that in a message, you can’t really be all that shocked when it goes public, can you?
AS IT TURNS OUT, YOU CAN!!! Within 30 minutes of my uploading the post, I received a call from the STELLAR offices. “Hey, [redacted] just called the office looking for you,” said G, STELLAR’s receptionist.
“[Redacted],” I clarified, “As in, [redacted]’s fiancé?!?”
“Yes,” she confirmed. “He said he needed to speak with you urgently and asked me to give him your mobile number. I said I couldn’t do that but that I’d call you and ask you to give him a call…”
I think I laughed; I absolutely did not want to speak to this man, who was clearly very displeased that I had “exposed” his beloved. But what was more confusing to me was the fact that I knew [redacted], at least, in a professional sense. We had met several times; I had creative directed a shoot she had been in; we had each other’s phone numbers and followed one another on Instagram. If she wanted to talk to me, she could easily have done so.
I sent her a message – and though I can’t remember exactly the content of the text, I remember saying something like, “Hey, [redacted] just tried to call me at the office. I’m not in, but I’m imagining it has something to do with the post I shared on Facebook – if you want to talk to me about it, I’m here.”
“I didn’t know he’d done that,” she responded, almost immediately. “I didn’t ask him to. He’s just seen how upset I am and he’s worried about me.”
I told her I’d remove the post, partially because I don’t really like the idea that I’m upsetting people, even if I think the reason they’re upset is… kind of silly. But mostly because I didn’t want to keep fielding calls from her angry soon-to-be husband, hell-bent on defending her honour against journalists determined to expose the slightly shitty way she spoke to her followers.
He wasn’t the only partner-of-influencer I’ve dealt with in my time, sadly.
Years later, I made the mistake of speaking on Instagram stories about what I saw as the lie people were telling themselves about wanting authenticity from influencers. It’s something we were hearing a lot about all the time: people didn’t want to see perfectly “curated” dining room tables; surely they didn’t just wake up with their full faces of make-up on; why do people keep apologising for having messy hair?!
But at the same time, one of the fastest-growing Irish Instagram accounts back then was @smythsisters, where fashion stylist Marianne Smyth shared mirror selfies of her very Copenhagen-chic (I mean that in the best way) outfits. Her pose was the same every day; there was very little insight into her “real” life; she didn’t share much beyond what she wore, and people loved it.
So, I surmised, even though people said they wanted warts-and-all authenticity, what they really wanted were aesthetically pleasing photographs of beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes, the exact content that Marianne was providing.
This shouldn’t really need to be said, but: I wasn’t insulting her, or her content. I was just pointing something out that I’d noticed – that people said they wanted one thing, but that the growth chart said otherwise. It wasn’t a dig at her, or at what she was doing; she was obviously, by the numbers, doing something right.
But that didn’t matter to Marianne’s husband, who was in my DMs like a shot, accusing me of tearing another woman down, betraying my self-professed “feminist” ideals, and spreading negativity, among other things. There was mention of how selfless Marianne was, what a great mother she is, how nasty I was for saying any of this (to remind you, I said that people loved her content, which was super chic minimalism without any of the ‘gritty’ authenticity they purported to want from their influencers. I was hardly accusing her of extortion or the exploitation of children).
I would love to say that I didn’t respond to him, but I’m pretty sure I did, attempting to explain that I was not, in fact, doing any of the things he accused me of, and that my stories were in no way meant to disparage or insult her, her mothering, or her content. But when you’re explaining, you’re losing, and there was no defending my position. I (sadly) added @smythsisters to the number of content creators who’ve blocked me (she joined an illustrious list that includes PJ Gallagher and Joe Duffy).
The thing that really got me about both of these experiences is this: where do these men come from? Where do you find them? I honestly cannot imagine anyone I have ever dated being willing to call up a journalist, or another social influencer, to scold them for being mean to me.
In fact, I asked my boyfriend at the time why he never came to my rescue online. He turned to me, deadpan, and said, “I wouldn’t have time to do anything else.” He was sometimes very funny.
I also wondered if the women in question were delighted by these moments of “gallantry” (in inverted commas because that word, like “chivalry”, seems archaic and borderline useless to me – what does it even mean to be gallant, in the year 2024?! I’d settle for someone asking how I like my tea and letting me pick the movie, honestly), or if they were as embarrassed as I imagined I would be.
Somehow, I suspect the former (although I’d be willing to bet that Amal Clooney is ever-so-slightly mortified by Georgie’s shenanigans…)