Brooklyn Beckham sends parents legal letter

[Downunderduchess]

I saw in the media that Brooklyn Beckham has had a legal letter sent to his parents requesting that they stop trying to make contact with him. I didn’t realise the talk of him falling out with them was real, thought it was just gossip. I think I was a bit shocked by it. Of course I don’t know them but they always seemed like a lovely close family.

VB was elated at his results & I think he might be the most academic of the bunch. I have a bit of knowledge on that as a fam friend at same school.

I don’t think BB is emotionally robust but like to think he got in largely on own merits. The Ivy League admissions scandal meant jail - Huffman - etc. You could no longer buy way in but this all might have blown up a bit later.

That's good to hear about Gordon Ramsay's kids
Gary Barlow's son is a medical student, perhaps a doctor by now, so much better than actor/mode/reality goon etc

Exactly. David is a good footballer and that's it. Victoria has no talent whatsoever, so it's not as if they had any real heritable skills to pass on (none of the kids seem much cop at sports, and I think football is the one thing Brooklyn didn't try) Just party kids. I have heard it said that they are very pleasant and polite, so the Beckhams did well in that respect, but other than that they don't have a great deal to recommend them.

He's not a medical student. He studied something sports related.

It doesn't matter if B is bright or not. It would have nothing to do with estrangement.

IDK he doesn't come across as any great brain to me. The Felicity Huffman thing was later, I think.

I don't get all the skills talk. A parents job is to let the child figure out who they are, what they like and are good at. Likely they failed at this. B probably had to play a role.

VB appears to be self absorbed and has an ED which no one discusses.

What does ED mean?

I wonder if he blames them for pushing their celebrity media obsessed lifestyle onto him forcing him to publish that photography book at 18 which made him into a laughing stock. And now he's realised it. The penny has dropped. Let's face it, without D &V no publisher would have touched that. It wouldn't surprise me if DB underwrote all the costs (as he does with VB fashion company and the millions it loses every year).

I recently read something briefly that mentioned that Brooklyn felt that it was all 'an orchestrated PR opportunity' (Sums up the Beckham lifestyle totally) and that's why he was refusing to see them anymore.

The last pics I saw of David B were a bit cringe as it looked like he was wearing a hairpiece (which didn't match), and his eyebrows and beard looked like they had been painted on (very poor dye job). He must look a sight, up close.

You can have fame and be rich and still be trashy.

Eating disorder.

she’s openly admitted she eats the same thing every day at one point.

In this context, it means eating disorder. It can also stand for erectile dysfunction.

She's orthroexic.

Well, we don't choose our parents, whoever we are.

Agree but It’s all relative.

I saw an interview quite a few years ago with Anais Gallagher (Noel’s daughter) I think it was and she made a comment about how some kids of famous parents are kept out of the spotlight, whereas others are exploited by their parents. I’m fairly sure she referenced the Beckham kids being in the latter group (or at least heavily hinted in) as if it was very much a well known thing that the kids were papped etc because the parents wanted them to be.

I think she maybe went to the same school as the Beckham boys but i’ll have to fact check that.

It was a very regular occurrence in the 60's, 70's and 80's too. The child was put outside for fresh air, well wrapped up and to hopefully sleep. Children weren't usually left outside for hours crying.

I read he was actually ok at football (no idea if any real talent) but because he started his education in the uk then moved the Spain, then the US and then back the UK he wasn’t able to make a go of anything football wise was he moved too much and wouldn’t access top training in the US as he would have done in the Uk so eventually just dropped out and never got a chance to make a go at anything.

All the boys tried football ,they just weren't good enough and tbf they would have had to be outstanding to be taken on by a premier league .

I think he played in arsenal?
Junior team as did Romeo and maybe cruz,but they were let go at 16 because they were not good enough ,theres no shame in that ,loads of young kids are not going to be good enough.

It's the only pattern he's known though. He's probably grown up thinking that everything has to be photographed to be sold to the media, as his parents do, and that life is just an exhausting performative, fake facade surrounded by people who are paid to construct an image.

Liza Minelli practically copied her mother's life and made the same mistakes: Stardom; drugs; rehab; alcoholism; gay husbands; illness; bankruptcy; abuse; etc. The Apple didn't fall far enough from the tree.

I can't imagine being a Beckham child would be easy on anyone's mental health. All that scrutiny, being used by your parents for publicity and £££ from the moment you were born, being forced into being seen as part of a brand. Every occasion or family moment is sold to the media... etc.

I remember watching a documentary on Jane Fonda (another nepo baby) and one of her ex-husbands said that the marriage had failed because JF spent all of her time thinking about Jane Fonda, and what Jane Fonda should do next. That level of self-obsession and narcissism (which a lot of movie stars and celebrities have) is just off the scale. A lot of it has to do with low self-esteem, insecurity and the constant need for validation. I can't remember which movie star (Marlene Dietrich?) said that the love of a husband or child wasn't enough that they had to have mass love, millions and millions of people worshipping you. I think narcissism and the need for fame is just another mental illness.

I'd be interested to see which ex husband said that, and what Jane's side of the story was. Because it it was Roger Vadim or Ted Turner, they weren't exactly strangers to narcissism themselves. That being said, I do believe that celebrities are mostly ruthlessly self involved. It is a prerequisite of the job.

The last pics I saw of David B were a bit cringe as it looked like he was wearing a hairpiece (which didn't match), and his eyebrows and beard looked like they had been painted on (very poor dye job). He must look a sight, up close.

I once saw DB described as looking a bit like a bouncer at a Soho strip club these days. I've never been able to not see him that way since. Classy he is not.

I wonder if he blames them for pushing their celebrity media obsessed lifestyle onto him forcing him to publish that photography book at 18 which made him into a laughing stock. And now he's realised it. The penny has dropped. Let's face it, without D &V no publisher would have touched that.

Probably not. But if he weren't the son of the world famous Beckhams, would a pretty billionaire's daughter have looked twice at him?

@IcedPurple

Probably not. But if he weren't the son of the world famous Beckhams, would a pretty billionaire's daughter have looked twice at him?

You are absolutely right. I don't know much about her or her family, apart from that she's American. She may not have had the savviness to realised it at the time, but now sees them for what they are and has opened his eyes to their trashiness.

I've taught many children of famous people.

In my experience it goes one of two ways.

1. Children are an accessory to parents' lifestyle. They get moved around the world/country on a regular basis, have disrupted schooling, lots of tutors and nannies coming in and out of their lives, etc. Parents rarely if ever come to school events or parents' evenings. Parents have made it very clear that the child will never need to work and therefore don't need to be arsed with school/getting qualifications. There is very little routine/structure for the kids and no accountability for poor behaviour or achievement. They are exposed to their parents' fame in an unhealthy way (taken to premieres, photographed, papped, plastered over social media, etc) and are surrounded by celebrities all the time, making any semblance of a 'normal' life impossible. These children invariably end up doing very poorly at school and drift afterwards because they don't know who they are beyond being 'famous person's child'.
2. Children are kept well out of the limelight and have as normal a life as possible. One parent is usually totally non-famous and always at home, so if the famous parent is working away, the children's routine doesn't change. Parents have made it clear to the children that they will not be getting a meal ticket for life and need to make their own way in the world. The children are expected to work hard at school and do well. Parents are very involved in school life and always attend events and parents' meetings. The children are never taken to any event where they will be photographed and they are kept out of the media circus entirely, including never being mentioned in interviews, so sometimes the children's' names are not even in the public domain. Their day-to-day lives are quite ordinary (but still privileged, of course) and they are rarely if ever in an environment where they are surrounded by celebrities. These children tend to do well at school, have healthy, stable friendships, and go on to do all sorts of degrees and jobs, often not connected to their parents' careers.

From the outside, the children in the first group seem like they have an absolutely amazing life - living in a string of mega mansions all over the world, holidays on yachts with movie stars, people falling over them to give them whatever they want, whenever they want - but the reality is, they have no stability and no purpose, and often struggle with making meaningful relationships as they never know if people like them for who they are or for who their parents are. Their parents' fame means they are just an extension of their parents, not people in their own right. It's also really hard to ever feel a sense of pride or purpose when it's unlikely you will ever live up to the success of your famous parent/s or be allowed to have credit for your achievements. A lot of these kids are very fragile and troubled as a result of their parenting and as they get older, self medicating through drugs and alcohol can become a real problem. Even when these kids have been a nightmare to teach, I've always felt really sorry for them. It's not a childhood I would want.

The children in the second group tend to turn out well because their needs have been prioritised by their parents throughout their childhood, their life is not built around their parents' fame, and they have been given a secure and stable start in life, surrounded by normal people, so that they don't exist in an alternate version of reality in which everyone is a super wealthy celebrity.

I would imagine the Beckhams' children fall into the first group of celebrity children and that being their child is not easy. Misogyny means that people want to blame Brooklyn's wife for his choice to separate himself from his parents - just like people want to believe that Meghan Markle poisoned Prince Harry's relationships with his family - but I would imagine that meeting someone and being able to form his own family has given him the ability to step away from a very controlling and limiting environment where he was just another product in his parents' brand catalogue. Good luck to him.

This is the thing about going NC. It has far reaching complications, especially if the siblings don’t understand the reasons and have strong loyalties to the parents.

I remember reading something about Liam Payne before he died along the lines of being really rich but having days of nothing to do and no purpose, which is why he tried to get validation via Instagram and the like. Poor kid, terrible way to live a life and I suspect BB is a bit the same.