There is a poignant through-line in Netflix’s new docuseries on Victoria Beckham, if only one can be bothered to look for it. It’s buried beneath a tranche of meticulously considered outfits and showbiz talking heads, inspirational soundbites and relentless “girl boss” speak during the build-up to the former pop star’s biggest ever show at Paris Fashion Week. Nevertheless, it’s there, quietly underpinning every decision and career twist. As we’re taken on a journey from Beckham’s transition from “awkward” theatre kid to Spice Girl to WAG to fashion designer, a sense of deep-rooted unease reveals itself as the consistent underlying theme.
Here is a woman who, on the face of it, has it all: the handsome, ex-football captain husband; the beautiful quartet of children; the successful career; the unimaginable wealth and idyllic country house. But here, equally, is a woman who hasn’t felt comfortable in her own skin in years – if ever. A woman so self-conscious that, by her own admission, she hasn’t felt confident enough to smile in a picture for a quarter century. A woman whose tightly wound drive can be traced inexorably back to an aching need for approval. “I desperately wanted to be liked,” she says of feeling like an outcast at school. But even winning the respect of the notoriously exclusionary fashion industry doesn’t feel enough to sate the void that, as any good therapist will tell you, can never be filled by external validation. “Who are you trying to prove this to?”, husband David asks her at one point. Everyone, it would seem.
The three-part series follows the template of numerous celeb-fronted documentaries aired in recent years, including that of Victoria’s own spouse. The production is slick, the roster of stars, wheeled in to provide testimony as to Victoria’s perseverance and dedication, impressive; Anna Wintour, Donatella Versace, Tom Ford and Eva Longoria all add star power. The overwrought attempt to paint Victoria as some sort of scrappy underdog who made it as a designer against all odds is, however, a tough pill to swallow. After all, this is the ultimate “riches to riches” narrative – a famous popstar married a famous footballer and pulled herself up by her bootstraps by using her extensive wealth and existing network of high-profile contacts to launch a now-successful fashion line. (One which, it must be noted, previously needed bailing out to the tune of £23m by her husband.)
Victoria herself is not unlikeable, if a little stiff; she cracks jokes, she does a dance routine with daughter Harper. As with similar documentaries, though, there’s a painstakingly curated, glossy version of “authenticity” – the watered-down version of “warts and all” – that frustratingly never digs into anything too gnarly. It’s the ultimate PR exercise, after all, with Brand Beckham in complete control of the story. There is no mention, for example, of the reported rift between the Beckhams and their oldest son, Brooklyn; talk of previous struggles in her marriage after David’s alleged affair with Rebecca Loos is conspicuous by its absence. (Beckham promptly and vehemently denied Loos’ account at the time, calling the allegations “ludicrous”.)
But we do get glimpses of the tension that fuels the relentless drive to prove herself – the conflict between feelings of inadequacy that vie with a yearning to be noticed. The “miserable cow” who comes out whenever Victoria sees a camera is born of insecurity; her World Cup WAG era look, meanwhile, all big boobs, big hair, big sunglasses and barely there hotpants, was motivated by “attention seeking” and a hunger to stay relevant.
We get a glimpse of something more raw and vulnerable too, when Victoria briefly discusses her eating disorder. Constantly scrutinised by the tabloids in the Noughties, she became the unwitting face of the toxic size-zero trend. “You become very good at lying,” she says. “I was never honest about it with my parents, I never talked about it publicly.” Yet it still feels like we’re spying through the tiniest crack before she clams up once more; one wonders if she can even bring herself to fully acknowledge the scale of the issue after years spent in denial.
There’s no question that Victoria is a hard-working and talented designer – where other celebs might slap their name on a line they had nothing to do with, she has built a distinctive brand from the ground up. Yet you don’t get the impression that any of these achievements have necessarily resulted in happiness.
“Don’t you feel confident enough that you can just sit back and relax?” David asks in a carefully staged conversation at their Cotswolds home, every inch the contented lord of the manor in stark contrast to his wife’s coiled spring of nervous energy. We already know the answer. But perhaps therein lies the real secret to her success – perhaps satisfaction is the enemy of ambition.
