TRIGGER WARNING: This article discusses eating disorders. Help is always available – call the Butterfly Foundation on 1800 33 4673.
Victoria Beckham is no stranger to media scrutiny. As a member of the world’s biggest girl group and half of one of the most high-profile celebrity marriages on the planet, she knows a thing or two about living in the public eye.
In her new Netflix documentary, the former Spice Girl is getting real about the impact the media has had on various aspects of her life – including body image.
In the upcoming series, titled Victoria Beckham, Posh Spice will reveal how years of negative attention led to body image issues, a restricted diet, and an eating disorder.
Speaking on the documentary, Victoria said, “I really started to doubt myself and not like myself and because I let it affect me, I didn’t know what I saw when I looked in the mirror.”
She continued, “Was I fat? Was I thin? I don’t know, you lose all sense of reality. I was just very critical of myself. I didn’t like what I saw. I have been everything from porky posh to skinny posh, I mean, it’s been a lot and that’s hard.
“I had no control over what was being written about me or the pictures that were being taken and I suppose I wanted to control that. I could control it with the clothing, I could control my weight. I was controlling my weight in an incredibly unhealthy way.
“When you have an eating disorder you become very good at lying. And I was never honest about it with my parents.
“I never spoke about it publicly, it really affects you. When you’re told constantly you’re not good enough. And I suppose that’s been with me my whole life.”
An industry insider previously told Page Six, “When you look back in hindsight at the media environment in the ’90s, it was super hard.”
“There was a huge scrutiny on Victoria’s appearance and her weight,” the source added. “I think the audience will have some understanding of what she went through.”
Victoria even admitted that “there are tears” in the footage.
“And it did occur to me the other day, what am I going to think when I see those tears on a huge screen? Or on an iPhone?” she told Bloomberg in May.
Back in 2022, Posh also slammed infamous TV presenter Chris Evans for forcing her to weigh herself on live television shortly after giving birth.
The incident occurred in 1999, two months after she had given birth to her first child, Brooklyn.
Chris Evans told Victoria, “A lot of girls want to know, because you look fantastic again, how did you get back to your shape after birth?”
After saying she had been lazy and hadn’t been to the gym at all, the host pressed further, asking, “Is your weight back to normal?”
She said it was but he persisted, getting her to step on some scales and remarking, “Eight stone’s not bad at all, is it?”
Reflecting on the event, Victoria said, “I went on a TV show with Chris Evans many years ago and I’d just had Brooklyn and lost a lot of weight after.
“It happened to my mum after her pregnancies. It doesn’t mean you have an eating disorder. And he made me stand on the scales to be weighed. Can you imagine doing that nowadays?”
In the July 2022 issue of Vogue Australia, Victoria Beckham also addressed the media’s obsession with her body shape.
“I’ve had ‘Porky Posh’, I’ve had ‘Skeletal Posh’. After I had Brooklyn, there was a picture pointing to every single part of my body where I had to focus on losing the weight from.”
In the upcoming documentary, Victoria will once again unpack the media scrutiny surrounding her body over the years, delving deeper into how it has impacted her.
If you or someone you know has been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, help is always available. Call the Butterfly Foundation on 1800 33 4673.
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