Victoria Beckham has shared how turbulent the ’90s was when it came to criticism over her weight, to the point where she was asked to weigh herself on television.
In a new interview, the former Spice Girl opened up about how the media felt entitled to knowing the ins-and-outs of her weight throughout her career, but even more so in the 1990s, after she gave birth to her son, Brooklyn.
“I’ve had ‘Porky Posh’, I’ve had ‘Skeleton Posh’,” she told the publication, as per People. “After I had Brooklyn, there was a picture on the front page of a newspaper pointing to every single part of my body where I had to focus on losing the weight from.”
Then, she mentioned a specific interview on TFI Friday that took place in May 1999, only months after her oldest child was born, where the show’s host Chris Evans—no, not the actor—asked Victoria if she could weigh herself in front of the cameras and a live studio audience.
At the time, Victoria wasn’t yet married to her now-husband David Beckham and was yet to welcome their four children together: Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz and Harper.
“I went on a TV show with Chris Evans many years ago, and I’d just had Brooklyn and lost a lot of weight after,” Victoria said, adding, “It happened to my mum after her pregnancies. It doesn’t mean you have an eating disorder. And he made me stand on the scales to be weighed. Can you imagine doing that nowadays?”
In the original interview, Chris spoke with Victoria about ‘bouncing back’ from her pregnancy, explaining that “a lot of girls want to know, because you look fantastic again, how did you get back to shape after birth?”
To which Beckham responded, “I’m really lazy. I don’t go down to the gym or anything.”
Then, Chris asked the fashion designer to prove to the world that she was “back to normal” after giving birth for the first time, making her step onto a scale and asking her, “Can I check, do you mind?”
And while Victoria agreed, it’s clear that she felt visibly uncomfortable throughout the entire situation, even telling the host, “This is horrible”.
In May, the fashion designer spoke on how her perspective on her body has changed over time.
“It’s an old-fashioned attitude, wanting to be really thin,” she told Grazia. “I think women today want to look healthy, and curvy. They want to have some boobs—and a bum,” she told the outlet, noting that personally, she wants “as good a bottom as I can get.”
She then recalled a holiday to Florida where she saw other women embracing their bodies, and hoped that her daughter would do the same as she gets older.
“There are a lot of really curvy women in Miami, and they really own it, you know?” she said. “They walk along Miami beach with not a lot of clothes on, and they look fantastic. They show their bodies off with such confidence. I found both their attitude and their style really liberating. And as a mother, I loved that Harper was around women who were really celebrating their curves and enjoying how they look.”
“It’s not about being a certain size,” she explained, adding, “It’s about knowing who you are and being happy with who you are. I have found my own balance between wanting to have fun and being disciplined about eating healthily and working out. When you’re younger you fight against that balance.”
