AMAL GOES BACK TO WORK

As a Canadian orchestra shuts down over body fascism and Gemma Arterton talks about studio pressure to lose weight, Nicole Mowbray reports on the stars taking a stand

OVER THE LAST TWO MONTHS,

their parental leave has included flying their newborn twins for a holiday in Lake Como, dinner dates with their friends and tennis matches in the sun.

But all good things must come to an end, and last week George Clooney officially went back to work as he promoted his film

Suburbicon, starring Matt Damon and Julianne Moore.

Now, Grazia understands that this week his wife, the 39-year-old human rights lawyer Amal, is returning to her own job, following the birth of their twins Ella and Alexander in June, and will be basing herself at their £10 million mansion.

‘Amal has constructed a luxury office on the left of their Berkshire home, in a wing that leads off the main house,’ said a well-placed source. ‘Amal wanted to stay close to the twins while continuing with her work. The idea is that she’ll spend as little time away from them as she can while juggling professional commitments.

‘There’s a special entrance so that visitors can come and go and avoid the main house. There is parking for six cars and the Clooneys’ on-site chef is on hand to make her visitors lunch when she has meetings. She has done everything she can to ensure she’ll be around the kids as much as possible.’

It follows Grazia’s revelation last month that the couple had taken ‘drastic’ security measures to protect their children after Amal received death threats for her humanitarian work.

The couple are said to have spent £15.5 million renovating the mansion in Sonning, Berkshire, after enlisting the help of the interior designer Isle Crawford, who previously worked with the Soho House Group and helped Anya Hindmarch design her flagship store on Madison Avenue, New York. They are also thought to be employing a full-time nursery nurse and nanny to help with the children.

‘George and Amal are slowly going back to work after spending a wonderful summer in Italy with Alexander and Ella,’ added the source. ‘But they are making sure the twins come first: their priorities have totally changed since the children arrived, and they just want to spend as much time with them as they can.’

‘ALTHOUGH ALMOST ALL of our vocalists are fit and slim…’ the email read, ‘two of our featured singers were not and we would hope that they would refrain from wearing tight-fitting dresses and use loose dresses instead.’ In a note to members last week – which subsequently went viral – management at the Toronto-based Sheraton Cadwell Orchestra declared: ‘Your image is our image. If you look good, we look good too.’

The message backfired. When the furious vocalists posted it online, accusing the organisation of ‘fat-shaming’, they encouraged the outraged to ‘riot’ about the post and made international news. Sheraton Cadwell singer Sydney Dunitz publicly wrote to orchestra general manager Andrew Chong, saying: ‘Many struggle with weight, many struggle with eating disorders, many are in the process of getting fit, many just plain enjoy their bodies as they are. That says nothing about their musical ability… This email is bullying.’ The organisation subsequently apologised and announced it is disbanding after several executives resigned in protest.

Fat-shaming is nothing new, but the Sheraton Cadwell musicians are just the latest group of women to call out the archaic standards governing how women are ‘supposed’ to look – with particular reference to their weight. In a recent podcast for The Guilty Feminist, actor Gemma Arterton revealed the lengths gone to by Hollywood studios to ensure their female stars are slim, claiming one flew a personal trainer out to her hotel to film her exercising to ensure she did it. Arterton also claimed producers would measure her and comment on her food intake. ‘They’d call up the personal trainer at like nine at night going: “Is she in the gym? And if she isn’t, why?”’ she said.

Elsewhere, Sophie Turner recently said in a magazine interview that she has ‘often’ been asked to lose weight for roles ‘even though it has nothing to do with the character’, and last month Chloë Grace Moretz hit the headlines when she revealed a co-star – a man in his twenties who she didn’t name – told her that while she may have been his love interest on-screen, she could never be so in real life as she was ‘too big’. She was 15 at the time.

Amy Schumer has said that she, too, fell prey to the pressure to lose weight at the start of her career, but wouldn’t do it again. ‘I feel very good in my own skin,’ she explained. ‘I feel strong. I feel healthy. I do. I feel sexy.’

Likewise, Jennifer Lawrence – who along with Amanda Seyfried has also spoken out about being pressured to slim down – now makes her feelings very clear to anyone who dares to mention her weight: ‘If anybody even tries to whisper the word “diet”, I’m like, “You can go fuck yourself.’’’

With so many female stars taking a stand against the expectation they need to maintain a body size which may be unrealistic or unhealthy, the tide is slowly beginning to turn. Actors like Melissa Mccarthy and Schumer, who write their own films or make them via their own production companies, are changing the perception that audiences only respond to skinny women – in fact, their success bears testament to the pleasure viewers take in watching stars who come in different shapes and sizes.

There are other signs of hope too. The film Patti Cake$, out last week, tells the story of a female rapper defying conventions of how a performer should look (she’s both white and overweight), and was a huge hit at the Sundance Film Festival. And Chloë Grace Moretz stars in an upcoming animated film, Red Shoes Andthe 7 Dwarfs, which is being marketed as being about ‘a princess who doesn’t fit into the celebrity world of princesses – or their dress size’.

So let’s just hope this isn’t the last we hear of the Sheraton Cadwell singers and their comeback is loud and proud.