Victoria Beckham has spoken candidly about suffering years of public scrutiny over her appearance, saying that constant pressure to be thin led to an eating disorder.
In her new Netflix docuseries “Victoria Beckham,” which premiered Oct. 9, the fashion designer and former Spice Girls member said the focus on her weight came from the beginning of her career.
The attention, she explained, impacted both her mental and physical health.
“I was weighed on national television when Brooklyn was 6 months old,” Beckham said, referring to her eldest son, now 26, according to E! News. “We laugh about it, we joked about it … but I was really, really young, and that hurts.”
Beckham, who was 25 at the time, said the expectation to maintain the thin image associated with 1990s pop stars caused deep insecurity as she grew older.
“I really started to doubt myself and not like myself, because I let it affect me,” she said. “I didn’t know what I saw when I looked in the mirror — you lose all sense of reality. I was just very critical of myself. I didn’t like what I saw.”
The singer, now 51, said that public labels such as “Porky Posh” and “Skinny Posh” intensified her struggle.
“I’ve been everything from ‘Porky Posh’ to ‘Skinny Posh.’ It’s been a lot, and that’s hard,” she said.
Beckham also opened up about developing an eating disorder that she concealed from her family.
“I was controlling [my weight] in an incredibly unhealthy way,” she said. “When you have an eating disorder, you become very good at lying. And 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.”
She added that the effects of that period continue to follow her.
“I suppose that’s been with me my whole life,” Beckham said.
The designer previously described her struggles with body image.
In her 2001 autobiography and in interviews, she said her approach to food and exercise became “obsessive” during her time with the Spice Girls.
According to earlier reports, she credited bandmate Geri Halliwell with encouraging her to restrict her diet.
“Geri would say things such as don’t put sauces on food, low-fat things were just as good, and that I could try not eating quite so much,” Beckham said in an interview at the time.
Reflecting on that era, Beckham described how dieting evolved.
“The trouble is that when you start thinking like this, it’s hard to stop,” she said. “I changed from someone who was dieting to lose a bit of weight to being obsessive. I was shrinking, and the excitement at getting thinner quite took away the hunger.”
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