The Victoria Beckham documentary - is this a weird perspective of mine?

[Jessekate]

Just reading about tonight's premiere of VB's documentary and seeing the Beckhams lined up ready to watch it, and all I can think of is how awful it is for the kids (and particularly Harper) having to watch all this.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we shouldn't ever be vulnerable in front of our kids and I know they have to understand the real world etc etc, but it just seems like such a lot for a 14 year old to have to absorb about a parent. So much vulnerability, all the stuff about eating (or lack of), VB being bullied as a child, her low self esteem. I look at my DD and DS (13 and 17) and think how worried they would be to hear all that about me and how anxious and protective it would make them feel, and in turn, how guilty I would feel. I don't think it's something that any amount of material wealth could compensate for. It would have such an impact on them, and not in a good way, I think.

I applaud VB for being so open, but part of me thinks it might have been a documentary to have done when all her kids were older...at least well out of their teens.

I also remember watching the David documentary and they were talking about how footie fans used to shout 'Posh spice takes it up the a*e' and again, all I could think of was....your kids are going to watch this. I was cringing on my sofa!!

I'm late 40s so maybe a bit old fashioned, but to me a lot about parenting is about having very filtered conversations in front of kids, even (or maybe especially) teenagers.

I don't mean to sound sanctimonious, although I probably do, lol! Just interested to hear other viewpoints, as everyone is going on about how amazing the documentary will be, but it can't be an easy watch for everyone in that family.

I don’t personally disagree but it might be they/she see things differently or why action they take? On the surface some of their more immediate problems recently resolved. It’s all a trade re: what you value most perhaps?

We don't have netflix and it isn't particularly something I'd want to watch anyway.😂

I don’t really understand this. Surely you know that the person discussed on forums like this isn’t really the person you know. Why would you even give what we have to say a second thought? We are discussing a public persona because it is all we know.

I mean, that clip someone put up of VB doing an interview is ridiculous. If she carried on like that in real life she would be insufferable. The mystery to me is why celebrities feel they have to keep putting out documentaries so that we can get to know “what they are really like”. It is as though they think their businesses will fail if the personality behind them isn’t always in our faces.

Surely though, you (and others) realise that most people's opinions of a celebrity are based largely on preconceptions, many of which are media-derived, and some of which are completely false? So when you watch a documentary such as this one, your perception of it is heavily influenced by those preconceptions, and cannot be impartial.

We are all watching Celebrity Traitors at the moment. How many of us have preconceived ideas of what those people are like in real life, based solely on what we know of their public persona?

I'm a bit confused by what you expect. There are celebs who do their job and then do promotion but put very little of themselves out there.

then there are those who are all over social media and do documentaries about themselves. They are playing a character - no one expects them to be presenting their real self - so the comments are based on what they are choosing to put out there.

you have to have the hide of a rhino if you want to play that angle but you can’t just blame the paparazzi and the press

but it’s no different to friends or family - you don’t always know the full picture of a person and what goes on behind closed doors. For example affairs, no one is going to be open about that with their friends and family and most definitely not to the press!

although one thing that really annoyed me with the Loos era was the mysogyny around how both the affair partner and the wife were portrayed. The men always got off easy

Really? You are a friend of the Beckhams and it's only on Mumsnet that you have seen any views about them??

And this is rubbish when it's David & Victoria you are talking about.

They have positively begged the media to follow their family because they created a brand out of it. They didn't offer up their photos to protect their kids from the papers etc at all, that's nonsense.
They have always played with fire as far as the media is concerned and consequently have got burnt.

I mean she’s not like other parents is she? They can Google her and see every step of her life through tabloids. All the dirty, raw, ugly secrets people usually keep quiet blown up on a global stage.

They’ve probably had to be brutally honest to their kids so that outsiders don’t try and hurt or embarrass them by sharing their secrets.

I agree with this. And it also makes no sense when other celebrities choose to keep their children’s lives private. There are plenty of A list celebrities whose children are unknown to the public: we have no idea what they look like, in some cases we don’t even know their names.

The Beckhams are different because their fame is their family. The brand they’ve created. Does anyone honestly think they would be as famous as they are without having created this family brand? Of course not! VB would have faded away into relative obscurity once the Spice Girls split. DB would be known as having been a top footballer but once he retired, he would hardly have been front page of the papers material. The reason they have the celebrity status they do is because they’ve developed the brand and splash it all over the media constantly to have as much presence as possible.

if it’s really true that the earlier poster knows the Beckham family then they have a strangely naive view about them.

I didn't say I was a 'friend of the Beckhams' I said I'd known the family for a long time. Slight difference there. I avoid the DM like the plague if that's what you're asking, I have no interest in magazines such as Hello! or others, I have very little interest in any celebrity news at all. Not just with regard to them but about anyone else either.

There are always MN threads on this topic, and I only stumbled across this one as I was using the advanced search for something else entirely and thought 'Oh hello, maybe I'll read some of it'. And it was pretty much what I expected. Anyway, I've had enough of it now. As you were.

Well that was a pointless little digression 😆

Through my previous knowledge of a very old school day friend of hers, not a current VB friend or associate, there is much local love & respect for her which is as it should be.

A visit to a local M&S at height of fame, made everyone’s day!…That’s likely true for any ‘local girl made good’ eg. Catherine Zeta Jones in Mumbles. The Middletons/Kate in Bucklebury, etc. Respect & pride.

We don’t know the ‘full story’ but the Beckhams & may well be perfectly nice behind closed doors but are a brand & have a very different approach re: fame & child exposure to media, courting of publicity. Almost a unique approach, were you really unaware of that? Or do you think they shouldn’t be discussed and especially criticised at all? The latter I really can understand if you’ve known them for years as good eggs & if so in your position I’d state they were lovely, decent folks or similar. You’ve not done that (unless have missed) only to say you were surprised by negative views & untrue or unkind Netflix docs which you’ve not seen? Finally of course many will be envious & this will unfortunately drive nastiness/negativity but if you watched the latest Netflix doc you’d see they might not have helped themselves in that regard.

@ThreePears finally to say I see you’ve not commented on particular unkindness or negativity only to say or suggest that family view was fame could be negative (?) Not all ‘its cracked up to be’ but perhaps an answer might be if you live by the sword you die by the sword…

Ive just watched episode 1. I found it quite sad that a lot of the footage from her in the spice Girls, she looked happy, relaxed, and was smiling contrasted to later pics where she seems very brittle, and not happy. Even in the clips with David or Harper, she doesnt really look relaxed.

And although I get that as a couple where (when they got together) both were very famous in their own right, they would attract a lot of attention from the press/paps/media, to a certain degree i think they actively wanted to keep themselves centre stage.
Other celebs can and do keep their private life (and children) very closely guarded, even with the fashion design, there are designers who are pretty much anonymous (to the general public) outside the catwalk shows. Once their football or music careers were over, im not convinced they couldn't have lived a much lower profile life, if thats what they wanted.

Ive just watched episode 1. I found it quite sad that a lot of the footage from her in the spice Girls, she looked happy, relaxed, and was smiling contrasted to later pics where she seems very brittle, and not happy. Even in the clips with David or Harper, she doesnt really look relaxed.

And although I get that as a couple where (when they got together) both were very famous in their own right, they would attract a lot of attention from the press/paps/media, to a certain degree i think they actively wanted to keep themselves centre stage.
Other celebs can and do keep their private life (and children) very closely guarded, even with the fashion design, there are designers who are pretty much anonymous (to the general public) outside the catwalk shows. Once their football or music careers were over, im not convinced they couldn't have lived a much lower profile life, if thats what they wanted.

Agree wholeheartedly with those saying many other celebs manage to keep their kids out to the limelight, especially when young. The poor Beckham kids had no choice about walking through hoards of paps, a decision made by their own parents. I think that’s a very bad choice for any parent to make and rarely ends well for the kids.

As a PP said, plenty of celebs seem to live their life out of the glare of the cameras. Aidan Turner (Poldark) got married about 5 years ago and I don't remember it even being reported and he was the biggest star in the country for ages.

Such bullshit! They are not hounded by the press, they court the press and sell all the stories and call the paps themselves. Fucksake, they’ve really got some people convinced that this juggernaut they’ve created has been thrust upon them. Oh to be so innocent and naive!

They orchestrate every bit of it, they see no other value in life other than more fame, more money. Otherwise, they’d be cracking on working away at personal projects like anyone else who had any kind of skill and half a billion in their pockets. We have to see and hear about them every single minute of every day, because desperately they want it to be so. It’s like a mental illness at this rate! David in particular his puffy face and creepy voice are on everything, everywhere you look. Why can’t he just enjoy his life? Why can’t Victoria do a course that teaches her how to sketch and cut patterns instead of propping up a fashion brand that would have failed at the first hurdle without sleb helpers and the family money behind her. Businesses that are failing for 15 odd years are usually just considered failures! There is no triumph here, just a pathetic thirst to constantly prove themselves to the British public, which is absurd and very sad.

There is no ‘intrusion’ they have stood at the door and invited the vampire in! BTW I know exactly which door is theirs because they constantly post their front steps in central London online, along with Harper in full school uniform that is very specific to the area. No paper could publish long lens photos of a child on a private yacht without the parents’ consent. It’s not legal and, if they wanted to, they could sue. They don’t sue because……. it’s them calling the paps.

I avoid the DM like the plague if that's what you're asking, I have no interest in magazines such as Hello! or others, I have very little interest in any celebrity news at all.

Well your mate Jackie will be gutted at your approach because it is the DM / Hello etc readership that keeps her and her family rolling in cash.

VB has her own named tab on DM celebrity section - which she and DB’s PR team feeds proactively with photos and stories daily about their activities. Then there is the content generated that is speculation and/or negative. The DM and VB don’t care - it’s volume and noise that keeps them high profile, the media get the clicks and the Beckhams can then raise their price for their brand collabs. And it’s working DB just announced that he has made the most money ever this year.

Problem with V&D though is despite all their wealth they don’t have something that many of us have and that’s a sense of ‘enough’. VB bleating on about the financial stress of her business, whilst being bailed out, whilst claiming furlough funded by minimum wage tax payers trying to scratch a living is vile.

The tens of thousands on plants & thousands to water them in her offices & her flippantly saying no idea contributing to business losses
too…re: tone deaf & arrogant. Look
into how a successful business operates or have more switched on team. But if all too scared to say no to her?…This was a jarring & maybe telling comment?

Yes it is arrogant - you’re right

i saw a clip this morning about when one of the sons was born and David wasn’t there because he was going a photo shoot with Beyoncé and J-Lo and she was saying how furious she was!!

She knows that I don't follow tabloid gossip or other stuff in the media.

But it’s stuff they have placed themselves …. show some love (£££) give them some clicks - they would be very grateful to you for bolstering their brand and earning capacity.

They shouldn’t court it then should they? They could have a marvellous life quietly out of the spotlight.

The Beckhamw are just social media fodder. A bit of light entertainment. I expect it pays well.