NEED TO KNOW
Victoria Beckham is opening up about her eating disorder, detailing how it affected her life behind the scenes.
In the Netflix docuseries titled Victoria Beckham, the former pop-star-turned-fashion-designer, 51, breaks her silence on her experience with the condition.
“I was weighed on national television when Brooklyn was 6 months old,” she explained, then reflected on some of the commentary blasted in the media about her image after delivering her eldest son.
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“‘Get on those scales’… ‘Have you lost the weight?’ We laugh about it and we joke about it when we’re on television, but I was really, really young and that hurts,” Victoria recalls. “I really started to doubt myself and not like myself because I let it affect me. I didn’t know what I saw when I looked in the mirror. You lose all sense of reality. I’ve been everything from ‘Porky Posh’ to ‘Skinny Posh’.”
Victoria — who also touched upon the subject in her 2001 book, Learning to Fly — admitted that, because of the disorder, she became “very good at lying” and that she “was never honest” with her parents about what she was going through. All the while, she felt like she was “controlling” the media’s criticism of her image in an “incredibly unhealthy way.”
“It really reflects you when you’re being told constantly you’re not good enough. And I suppose that’s been with me my whole life.”
In a separate confessional, her husband, David Beckham, looks back at the microscope on women in the early 2000s. “People felt it was okay to criticize a woman for her weight, for what she’s doing for what she’s wearing. There were a lot of things happening in TV then that wouldn’t happen now, that can’t happen now.”
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“My Victoria that I knew, sits at home in track suit, smiling laughing, having a glass of wine. That started to go purely because of the criticism that she was getting,” the former athlete remembers.
In 2021, Beckham talked about her diet on the Ruthie’s Table 4 podcast, describing herself as a “very fussy eater” who likes “things to be cooked in a very simple way. I don’t like oils and butters and sauces. So to most restaurants, I’m probably the worst nightmare.”
She revealed that she “adapted a very healthy way of eating” when she joined the Spice Girls because “you’re on tour and you’re expecting so much from your body. So, I decided from that point to really try and eat in a clean way. Lots of vegetables, lots of fish. I don’t have any dairy at all. I haven’t eaten red meat since I was about seven years old.”
“In the way that I eat, I’m very very disciplined,” she said. noting that she doesn’t “deny” herself of anything. “I expect a lot from myself being a working mum [with] four children. I work out a lot, I eat very healthily. that’s just who I am.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, The Alliance for Eating Disorders provides a fully-staffed helpline at 1-866-662-1235, as well as free, therapist-led support groups.
