My eating disorder made me good at lying

“It is not about him, it is about me,” declares Victoria Beckham (“him” being her husband Sir David Beckham).

And that is precisely what we get in a brand new three-part documentary, which drops on Netflix on Thursday.

The previous Spice Lady and trend entrepreneur, 51, is decided to inform her personal story – two years after former England captain Sir David, 50, launched his own, hugely successful TV series.

Within the episodes, Victoria is strikingly open about her consuming dysfunction, and the way it made her “good at mendacity”.

The collection additionally takes us inside Victoria’s pop profession, household life, struggles to reinvent herself and preparation for a significant present at Paris Trend Week.

There are contributions from well-known pals together with Eva Longoria, and trend titans equivalent to Dame Anna Wintour and Donatella Versace.

Listed here are our foremost takeaways from her documentary.

Victoria achieved dizzying fame within the Spice Ladies, so it is onerous to imagine that at college, she was “that uncool child” who did not slot in.

“I used to be undoubtedly a loner at college”, she says, explaining she was bullied.

She says that she first began getting criticised about her look and her weight at a younger age.

And when she joined the Spice Ladies in 1994, she frequently confronted damaging headlines about her weight.

“I used to be controlling [the narrative] in an extremely unhealthy means. When you’ve an consuming dysfunction, you change into excellent at mendacity,” she mentioned.

“And I used to be by no means very sincere about it with my mother and father. I by no means talked about it publicly. It actually impacts you, whenever you’re being advised always you are not ok. And I suppose that’ been with me my complete life.”

However Woman Beckham says her bandmates Mel B, Mel C, Emma Bunton and Geri Halliwell made her “really feel extra lighthearted, extra enjoyable”, and made her “really feel ok” about being herself.

It is a message she continues to instill in her daughter Harper, 14.

“I inform Harper on daily basis, be who you’re,” she says.

After the discharge of their chart-topping debut single Wannabe in 1996, “Spice mania” swept the planet, with their self-styled “Lady Energy” mantra – a model of feminine empowerment that made them a world popular culture phenomenon.

However Geri Halliwell left the Spice Ladies in 1998 and the group break up up in 2001.

Woman Beckham says she discovered the transition “actually, actually tough”.

She carried on making music, however the criticism she acquired “actually damage”.

Then got here the notorious WAG interval. Footage of Victoria and different wives-and-girlfriends supporting their footballer companions within the German city of Baden-Baden in 2006 have been plastered everywhere in the tabloids.

“It was enjoyable,” says Woman Beckham of that point in her life.

However she now concedes there was an “aspect of consideration looking for” to all of it. “I used to be looking for myself, I felt incomplete, unhappy, frozen in time perhaps,” she says.

After the household moved to the US, Woman Beckham determined she needed to work in trend.

However to try this, she knew she needed to shed her different personas – the Spice Lady, the WAG. “I buried these boobs in Baden-Baden,” she says.

Woman Beckham may be very sincere in regards to the struggles her trend enterprise confronted.

She says individuals did not see her as “cool in any respect”, and that lots of people refused to take her significantly.

And Vogue large Dame Anna cements that view, when she says of Victoria’s trend aspirations: “I assumed perhaps this was a passion. I did not fairly imagine it.”

We see the expansion of Victoria Beckham Ltd but in addition the intense monetary troubles it confronted. Sir David says he did not assume her enterprise would survive, whereas Woman Beckham agrees.

“I virtually misplaced every little thing and that was a darkish, darkish time,” she says. “I used to cry earlier than I went to work on daily basis as a result of I felt like a firefighter.”

She says her agency was “tens of tens of millions within the purple”.

In a later scene, her voice breaks, and he or she wells up in tears, when she remembers how Sir David stepped in to assist her enterprise out.

However the collection additionally reveals her flip issues round, and we see her pull out all of the stops within the run-up to her triumphant Spring/Summer season present at Paris Trend Week in September 2024.

Supermodel Gigi Hadid walked for her, sporting a hanging emerald inexperienced robe. Dame Anna is proven in attendance, and, in an earlier clip, says Woman Beckham “completely proved us unsuitable”.

At the moment, Victoria’s enterprise has places of work in London and New York, with its flagship retailer in Mayfair, London. The model’s merchandise are in 230 shops throughout 50 international locations all over the world, in keeping with the corporate’s web site.

The couple’s eldest son, 26-year-old Brooklyn, will get a number of mentions within the present and seems briefly. Woman Beckham brings him up in dialog, when discussing the morning illness she confronted whereas pregnant with him and performing with the Spice Ladies.

However for the previous few months, a lot of the net curiosity across the Beckhams has targeted on reviews that Brooklyn and his spouse Nicola have fallen out with the remainder of the household.

The couple have been absent from David Beckham’s fiftieth birthday celebrations and didn’t publish a birthday message on-line, fuelling the intrigue.

Nicola has previously denied there was a feud within the household. Sir David and Woman Beckham have by no means acknowledged the rumoured rift, and declined to remark when requested by BBC Information.

We did get a touch on the subject lately from Victoria, who told the Sunday Times how she felt Liam and Noel Gallagher’s reconciliation should have made their mom “so glad”.

“As a mum, that have to be… she should really feel so glad to see her boys getting on,” she mentioned.

Showbiz reporter Catrina Rose notes there was “no trace” of any alleged feud within the collection.

“Victoria’s setting a number of information straight right here, however she’s not being drawn on this specific matter.”

Woman Beckham’s pout turned her defining look within the Nineties. However within the new collection, she admits there is a deeper cause as to why she by no means smiles.

“The minute I see a digital camera, I modify,” she says.

“The barrier goes up, my armour goes on, and that is when, you already know, the depressing cow that does not smile – that is when she comes out. And I am so aware of that.”

She provides that she would “reasonably not be that particular person” and desires she had the boldness to stroll out in entrance of cameras and smile.

Elsewhere, she insists that she does truly smile.

“I’ve regarded depressing for all these years as a result of once we stand on the purple carpet, this man has at all times gone on the left,” she says, gesturing at Sir David.

“Once I smile, I smile from the left, as a result of if I smile from the appropriate, I look unwell. So consequently I am smiling on the within, however nobody ever sees it, in order that’s why I look so moody.”

The programme is stuffed with small particulars in regards to the Beckhams’ relationship – a lot of which we did not know earlier than.

For instance, Sir David begins a blender when he does not wish to take heed to Victoria (so she says, anyway).

The pair have fond reminiscences of their whirlwind romance within the Nineties, which led to them getting married and having a child inside two years.

Sir David displays that his mother and father – and his supervisor – would have most well-liked him to marry a neighborhood woman who stayed in Manchester, the place he was enjoying for Manchester United. “However I did not need that,” he says, opting as a substitute for globe-trotting movie star Victoria.

“I used to be so excited, I needed everybody to know I used to be courting Posh Spice,” the previous England captain says.

Woman Beckham, for her half, says she was by no means a younger woman dreaming of getting married or changing into a mum. “It wasn’t till I met David that these issues even occurred to me,” she says.

Within the closing episode, which was filmed earlier than Sir David’s fiftieth birthday this 12 months, the pair get reflective about every little thing they’ve achieved, and what lies forward for them.

“Success, it feels good, I am not going to lie,” says Victoria. “I’ve nonetheless received loads that I wish to do.”

Sir David, for his half, appears to have one thing else on his thoughts.

“Now we’re each, nicely I am virtually 50, you are 51, what’s subsequent? One other child?,” David asks his spouse.

Victoria laughs. “One other child? My God. No.”

Victoria Beckham, a three-part documentary collection, is accessible now on Netflix.