Victoria Beckham reveals eating disorder was attempt to take back control
By Laura Harding, Deputy Entertainment Editor
Victoria Beckham has said she became “very good at lying” as she battled an eating disorder.
The fashion designer and Spice Girl said she was “never honest” with her parents about her struggles and never spoke about it publicly.
Speaking in her new eponymous Netflix documentary series, Ms Beckham said she took control over her weight because she had no control over the photos that were taken of her and the words that were written.
In the series she recalled the moment she was weighed on TV six months after giving birth to her first son, Brooklyn.
She said: “‘Get on those scales’ on television. ‘Have you lost the weight?’. You know, we laugh about it and we joke about it when we’re on television. But I was really, really young, and that hurts.
“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. Was I fat? Was I thin? You lose all sense of reality. I was just very critical of myself. I didn’t like what I saw.
“I’ve been everything from ‘porky posh’ to ‘skinny posh’. It’s been a lot, and that’s hard.
“I had no control over what was being written about me, 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 and I was controlling it in an incredibly unhealthy way.
“When you have an eating disorder you become very good at lying. I was never honest about it with my parents, I never talked about it publicly.
“It really affects you when you’re being told constantly you’re not good enough. And I suppose that has been with me my whole life.”
Her husband Sir David Beckham said people felt it was “OK to criticise” women for their weight in the 1990s and 2000s when his wife was the subject of media scrutiny over her appearance.
He said: “People felt that it was OK to criticise 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 won’t happen now, that can’t happen now.”
Speaking about how this affected their life, Sir David said: “My Victoria that I knew sits at home in a tracksuit, smiling, laughing, having a glass of wine and that started to go purely because of the criticism that she was getting.”
The three-part series charts the businesswoman’s early life and music career with the Spice Girls, while also following her as she prepares for a high-stakes fashion show at Paris Fashion Week.
Victoria Beckham is streaming on Netflix now.