The new trailer for the Victoria Beckham documentary on Netflix, out next month, begins with the former Spice Girl turned fashion designer admitting: “People thought I was that miserable cow that never smiled. But I do [smile],” she continues. “Don’t be shocked.”
Hang on, Victoria! Get a grip! I must confess, it’s not a subject that keeps me up at night. She has every right to feel judged, amplified by living in the goldfish bowl of celebrity and navigating misogynistic commentary from the media and the WAG label, stuck on her the minute she and David got together 28 years ago.
But the brutal truth is it’s her, not us, who has spent hours and hours of her life consumed with what the world thinks of her and her perceived failings.
It is a chronic case of excruciating self-obsession fuelled by insecurity, and most of us suffer from it to a degree, including myself.
Beckham seems tortured by it, as I once was. In an interview in Elle, published this week, she reveals: “When I was younger, I was so self-conscious because of my skin. I didn’t even want to look people in the eye. It really affected my confidence. It can make you quite depressed.”
She also mentions that, since she started her fashion label in 2008, she has at times been “the laughing stock” with people not taking her business seriously. But after a rocky period of her business being “millions in the red”, its sales are on the up – to £112.7m in 2024. Her respected fashion label and beauty line are worn by Hollywood A-listers.
Many of us have tried to prove we are good enough through external validation and overachieving, but the real problem is that it’s not what others think of us – it’s how we view ourselves.
This is what boffins call the “liking gap.” In social psychology, the liking gap is the disparity between how much a person believes that another person likes them and that other person’s actual opinion. Studies have found that most people underestimate how much other people like them and enjoy their company
It’s the curse of negative self-talk. I’d always have a running commentary going through my mind: “Oh they think I’m boring or too chatty”; “They don’t like me”; “They think I’m not good enough”; “They don’t love me anymore”; “They want to leave ”; or, “I’ll be the laughing stock” –much like a certain Posh Spice.
I spent a year avoiding romantic relationships in order to learn to live happily with myself, rather than seek validation that I am lovable through a romantic partner. I do positive self-talk, such as telling myself that I look nice today, and all in all, I try to get out of my own self-centred headspace. I help another person or I take the dog for a walk.
Therapy has also hugely helped me to turn things around. As a therapist once told me crudely, I needed to “get my head out of my arse”.
Whether or not you care about Victoria Beckham, and what she thinks that we all think of her, she has evidently finally embraced everything she thought was cringe about herself.
In a viral clip from Netflix’s 2023 docuseries Beckham about her husband, she claims that she and David came from “very working class” upbringing, only to then admit, after a lot of pressure from David, who peeps his head around the door to get her to “be honest”, that her dad drove her to school in a Rolls-Royce in the 1980s.
She has since turned the joke to her own advantage and released £110 t-shirts (organic cotton, naturally) emblazoned with tongue-in-cheek slogans like “My Dad Had A Rolls-Royce”, “Fashion Stole My Smile” or “I’m Smiling on the Inside”.
So be more Beckham and embrace the cringe. I have. That is, when I can get my head out of my arse.
