Credit: Hello!
First, forever-bachelor George Clooney finally decides to get married (while Ryan Gosling plays stay-at-home-dad to his new baby with Eva Mendes). Then, his fiancée turns out to be a stunning British barrister with years of high-level international human rights work under her belt. Finally, the barrister, Amal Alamuddin, opts to wear pants for the couple's civil ceremony. We repeat: She got married in. pants. While looking totally gorgeous. (Though, OK, she did wear a more traditional lavish gown for the wedding itself.)
How much more suffering can the average woman take?
The pants part is, of course, not as important as the rest—it's only the icing on the cake of the story that is George Clooney and his romantic choices. He had waitresses. He had Italian lingerie models. But when he met a smart, educated career woman all hell broke loose—the plot line is so remarkable and unexpected, the world has been unable to tear itself away from the story. George Clooney is settling down with an independent woman with a notable career—what a shocker!
Alamuddin, who just happens to be beautiful (that hair! Those eyes!) probably made a conscious choice about the pantsuit. It wasn't Bianca Jagger wedding inspiration—at least not stylistically. But just like Jagger, Alamuddin is probably more than well aware of the buzz surrounding her union; it's the union of a strong alpha male with a worthy equal. And like Bianca Jagger, she is marrying a man many, many tried to tame without success.
My guess is that she must feel silly and amused by how shaken the media industry is, their surprise revealing core sexism—everyone would rather talk about her style transformation than her work, but let's mention her work so comments on her style transformation sound justified. Who wants to be a "scruffy human-rights lawyer" (thank you, NY Daily News, for that charming tidbit) when you can be a "style icon"? So she wore pants for the civil ceremony (but backed it up with a big wedding dress for magazine covers)—proclaiming her independence and strength.
She is her own woman, and she chose to get married in a pantsuit.
If this theory is even somewhat true, she shouldn't have felt compelled to do it. As opposed to playing up her tough, independent image, Amal could have simply ignored those social constructs and restraints. We'll never know what was behind her decision—personal style preference or a statement—but let's hope it wasn't a desire to crowd please. Let's hope that in this day and age you could marry George Clooney and wear the most feminine dress on planet earth, because you're a badass lady and you have nothing to prove.
