14 DAY TRIAL // It turns out that even the simplest things celebrities do are enough to light a fire under the boiling kettle that is today's media. Case in point: Amal Alamuddin marries George Clooney – so far so good, Amal goes on her honeymoon with Clooney – we're still cool, Amal changes her maiden name and takes on Clooney's last name – the whole world goes mad!
The lawyer is being accused by some media outlets, even some of the more reputable ones, that she's falling prey to an outdated custom, that of taking on the family name of your husband. No one had any idea that this was such a sensitive topic and that it could spark such outrage.
Amal Alamuddin manages to step on many toes by changing her name to Clooney
It has probably a lot to do with the fact that Amal was seen as an independent, career-driven woman up to this point, and many may have thought that it made no sense to change her name altogether. Probably, most people thought she would choose to hyphenate her last name, going for the Clooney-Alamuddin version, but when she decided to drop her name altogether, people seriously freaked out.
It may also have something to do with the fact that English speakers tend to have problems pronouncing and spelling foreign names, particularly those from the Middle East, and Amal was simply tired of having to repeat her name to anyone who didn't catch it the first time.
Feminists in particular aren't tickled by Amal's choice, seeing as how she was already famous when she married the actor
But feminists are coming out of the woodwork and shouting “treason” at Amal, blaming her for following social customs instead of keeping her own identity. Salon went to the trouble of calculating that as many as 86% of all American women change their names to that of their husbands, and adds that high-profile women are still expected to keep their maiden names.
This is why everyone is getting so fussy over the name change, because Amal Alamuddin had already become a trademark name and now people are going to wonder who is Amal Clooney (well, not really, but some are overreacting).
The Guardian decided to take a funny stab at the whole matter and named its piece “Amal Alamuddin took George Clooney's name? Oh please – put your torches and pitchforks away,” predicting that most of its readers were going to react badly to the news.
It turns out they were right, because most of the comments to the article spoke negatively about Amal's choice.
The conclusion is that Amal's choice, while harmless and perfectly acceptable in all cultures of the world, has sparked a brand new discussion about feminism, social standards and “patriarchal oppression.”
While most of the people opposing the concept admit that for married people it's more convenient to have the same name, some have gone as far as to propose that all newly married couples get an arbitrary third-party name that has nothing in common with their first one, both partners giving up their heritage that way.