Victoria Beckham doesn’t shy away from the difficult parts of her life in the brand-new Victoria Beckham documentary series, which premiered on October 9 on Netflix. She opens up about the eating disorder she dealt with for years while under the scrutiny of the public eye.
“I was controlling [my weight] in an incredibly unhealthy way,” Victoria says in the three-party documentary. “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. And I suppose that’s been with me my whole life.”
Victoria’s husband, David Beckham, recalls a shift in her behavior because of the relentless criticism. “My Victoria, that I knew, sits at home in a tracksuit, smiling, laughing, having a glass of wine. That started to go purely because the criticism she was getting,” he admits in the documentary.
“I was weighed on national television when Brooklyn [Beckham] was six months old,” Victoria remembers. “We laugh about it, we joked about it…But I was really, really young, and that hurts.”
David acknowledges that “people felt it was okay to criticize a woman for her weight, for what she’s doing, for what she’s wearing. There were a lot of things happening on TV then that won’t happen now, that can’t happen now.”
The barrage of comments about the Spice Girls star’s weight caused her to doubt herself and her body. “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,” she admits.
If you or someone you know has an eating disorder, contact the National Eating Disorders Association at 1-800-931-2237 or text NEDA to 741-741.
Victoria Beckham, Streaming Now, Netflix