5 months ago
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Victoria Beckham is one of the best parts of the Beckham docuseries on Netflix. She’s interviewed separately, chiming in stories about her husband’s life, and she’s just great. You can really see and hear about all of the storms they’ve weathered and how they managed to stick together. It made me feel differently about both David and Victoria, and I understood their marriage more too. Well, Victoria covers the latest issue of Allure, and she talks about the series but mostly she’s just talking about her own stuff, makeup, being bullied, her kids, etc. It’s a good interview.
On being bullied as a child in school: “I’ve never really told my story about being the underdog at school. I was bullied — a lot.. .I never fitted in socially. And when anybody is different, kids can be really mean. I remember being mentally bullied, physically bullied, literally pushed around.”
Raising her children to be kind to others because of her own experience with bullying: “I have always said to [my daughter] Harper, ‘If you see a little girl sitting on her own in the playground, that was your mum. Go up and talk to that little girl…My entire school life was a misery, an absolute misery. Kids can be bloody horrible. I would never, ever allow my children to treat anybody like that. I know everybody thinks their kids are angels, but my kids are genuinely very kind. That’s the most important thing, isn’t it?”
On working hard just to be “less-than-average”: “I’ve always had to work really hard. At school, I had to work really hard to get less-than-average grades. When I was dancing and singing, I had to work really hard to be good, but was never good enough. I was an alright dancer. I was an alright singer. People were very quick to say, ‘You can’t sing.’ I can joke about it better than anybody. I’ll take the mickey out of myself…I mean, obviously, I could sing a little. But I always had to work very hard just to be okay at anything. That’s why the Spice Girls worked: Individually we were underdogs, but collectively we worked.”
On what she would never leave the house without: “I test everything. If you were to say, ‘What are the two items you don’t leave the house without?’ BabyBlade Brow. I’m obsessed with brows — my husband has never seen me without my eyebrows. And Instant Brightening Waterline Pencil to make my eyes look more awake. Makeup is my thing. Probably the only thing I was any good at in school was art.”
On watching the final scene of the Beckham documentary: “I cried when I saw the last scene of the documentary. It was an emotional experience. Then when you look at our journey and us dancing [to “Islands in the Stream”] in the tent…”
On their youngest son, Cruz’s, reaction to the documentary: “Cruz, our youngest son, said, ‘Wow, I had no idea Dad was so good at football.”
Re: her kids’ kindness… after the Beckham docuseries, people were like “how did their kids end up so unmotivated with zero hustle?” But I get it – David and Victoria went through hell and back with the British media and all of the traveling, and they still managed to raise four healthy and relatively well-adjusted kids. Their priority was never “raising another generation of excellent footballers” or whatever, they just wanted to raise kind and gentle kids. And I think they did that. Also: “my husband has never seen me without my eyebrows” – she’s said that before and I get a kick out of it every single time. She’s really applying her eyebrows before David wakes up every morning.
Photos courtesy of Sølve Sundsbø for Allure.com, received via promotional email.
