In the last decade, a spate of pop culture examining how the media mistreated famous women in the 1990s and 2000s has recontextualized their stories. Jordan Peele produced a docuseries on Lorena Gallo nee Bobbitt in 2019, which reframed her narrative as an alleged victim of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. Monica Lewinsky’s story got a Ryan Murphy adaptation in Impeachment: American Crime Story in 2021. Also in 2021, Britney Spears was the subject of the New York Times-produced documentary Framing Britney Spears which was instrumental in ending her 13-year conservatorship later that year. Spears told her own story in the 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me, which, along with a flood of memoirs by other maligned women, such as Jessica Simpson, Pamela Anderson, and Paris Hilton, prompted questions about our complicity in their mistreatment.
The latest aughts-era tabloid figure being reconsidered is Victoria Beckham, in Netflix’s three-part documentary series of the same name dropping on Thursday. Beckham is primarily now known as a pop star-turned-fashion designer, the latter of which Victoria Beckham centers on as it follows her Spring/Summer 2025 show at Paris Fashion Week, interspersed with old footage and interviews with her, her husband David Beckham, and their famous friends and acquaintances. Those who didn’t grow up with the Spice Girls might forget that Beckham, or “Posh Spice,” was considered haughty and standoffish, compared to her other, more gregarious bandmates: “Scary Spice” Melanie Brown, “Sporty Spice” Melanie Chisholm, “Ginger Spice” Geri Halliwell-Horner, and “Baby Spice” Emma Bunton. She was also perceived as the weakest singer in the band, which she acknowledges in the documentary: “I’d be lying if I said I was the best singer or dancer.”
After the Spice Girls broke up in 1998, Beckham was a constant target of criticism by the the worst tabloids, which found something to drag in her every move and look. “I’ve been called everything from Porky Posh to Skinny Posh,” the infamous scowler says in the doc. This exacerbated an eating disorder stemming from her childhood as a dancer, when an instructor once told her she was fat. Her solo career, which she tried to get off the ground in 2000, was a bust, so she primarily became known as David Beckham’s partner, or a WAG (wife and girlfriend of a sportsplayer). The couple married in 1999 after dating for two years and she relocated to Manchester, home of Beckham’s soccer team.
“The next thing, I’m a wife in a flat in Manchester, not really having any friends, living a long way away from my family. I found that really, really difficult,” she says.
The series does not touch on the tabloid attention that followed the Beckhams in 2004, when it was alleged that David had an affair with his personal assistant, Rebecca Loos, and the many further accusations of cheating that littered gossip columns after. David Beckham addressed the scandal briefly in his own 2023 Netflix docuseries, Beckham. “Everytime we woke up, it felt like it was something else,” he says. Also omitted from Victoria Beckham are current rumors of a family feud. All of her children except her eldest, Brooklyn, appear in the docuseries. (Though Victoria Beckham is not produced by its namesake, this exclusion reflects an ongoing celebrity documentary industrial complex that wants to remain on the side of its subject.)
The series traces her life as Victoria followed David from Manchester United to Real Madrid to LA Galaxy (a journey that was documented in the 2007 reality series Victoria Beckham: Coming to America) and reveals how, in the process, she lost her identity. “People would introduce themselves as, ‘I’m so-and-so’s wife.’ Right, but what’s your name?” says Eva Longoria, Beckham’s longtime friend and former WAG herself (she was married to basketballer Tony Parker from 2007 to 2011).
Victoria finally found herself again in fashion, which has always been a touchpoint in her life. She relished dressing up to perform as a child, and says that since she cared more than the rest of the Spice Girls about fashion, most of their clothing budget went to her “little Gucci dresses.” Tom Ford, head designer of Gucci at the time, and Donatella Versace are featured in the docuseries. Versace says she felt slighted by Beckham when she deigned to redesign a Versace dress that was on loan to her. “How does she dare?” Versace remembers thinking at the time. “But then I realized, it looked better the way she [did] it.”
So it seemed like a no-brainer that Beckham would eventually make her way into the industry. Despite the irony of her preoccupation with designer labels designating her as the stuffy one in the Spice Girls, she was met with scorn by the fashion establishment. “We can all be a bit snobby in the fashion business,” Anna Wintour says in an appearance in the doc.
Cue a whole new set of criticisms about her fashion acumen, once again mostly centered on her relationships to the men in her life, specifically Roland Mouret whom Beckham shadowed as she prepared to launch her own line and, later, her husband who bailed her brand out when she faced financial difficulties in 2017 and 2018. “‘Of course there’s got to be a man behind it, it couldn’t be a silly little pop star,’” she says of the critique. Ultimately, she had to “shed the personas” of the pretentious pop star, artificial WAG and even unsmiling sourpuss (Beckham actually has quite the sense of humor).
“I didn’t need to say, hey look at me, because this creative outlet can do the talking,” she says. Even now, as a bonafide fashion success, with the Victoria Beckham label undergoing four years of consistent growth resulting in over £100 million in annual sales, she’s mostly dressed down in quiet luxury hoodies in the documentary. Posh Spice, indeed.
Some viewers might struggle to find empathy for Beckham in the series. After all, this is the woman who went viral for a clip from Beckham in which she admitted her family had a Rolls Royce when she was growing up. But rich girls have problems too and, as Beckham says, “when people are mean… and you’re constantly made to feel you’re not good enough, that hurts.”
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