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Victoria Beckham has revealed how she suffered from a life-long eating disorder which she hid from her closest friends and family.
The 51-year-old fashion designer has laid bare her vulnerability in a new self-titled Netflix documentary.
The three-part fly-on-the-wall series, from the Emmy award-winning directors of her husband David’s series BECKHAM, gives viewers a front row seat to Victoria’s life.
Charting her journey from being a self-proclaimed ‘loner’ child to life as a WAG and finally preparing for Paris Fashion Week, the series has been hailed for showing a brutally honest and funny side to Victoria.
It also features a number of star-studded guest interviews, from the likes of Anna Wintour, Tom Ford, Donatella Versace, and Eva Longoria.
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However, the former Spice Girl has shared for the first time her torment at being body shamed and how she ‘didn’t like’ what she saw when she looked in the mirror, which led to her controlling her weight in an ‘incredibly unhealthy way’.
Reflecting on her time in the massively successful Spice Girls, Victoria hailed Geri Halliwell, Melanie Brown, Melanie Chisholm and Emma Bunton for helping her ‘accept’ who she really was, admitting that she ‘didn’t fit in’ and ‘desperately wanted to be liked’ when she was younger.
Discussing her experience at theatre school when she was a teenager, she said in the series: ‘I didn’t look like a lot of the other girls. That’s where I started getting a lot of criticism about my appearance, my weight.
‘I remember the principle of the theatre school saying to me, you know, at the end of the show we are going to just fly in. “You girls can be flown in” meaning that we weren’t looking as aesthetically pleasing as some of the others, “so we’ll just fly you in the back”.’
Victoria’s mother Jackie also added that she was told: ‘You’re overweight. You’ll be at the back.’
Everything you need to know about Victoria Beckham’s documentary
What is the documentary about?
The documentary series gives viewers a front row seat as Victoria
prepares for the fashion show of her life. From the teenager who restyled her school uniform, to the Spice Girl who fought to be accepted by a notoriously demanding fashion industry.
How many episodes does the series include?
The documentary comprises of three episodes: Who Does She Think She Is?, Kill the Wag, and Show Day.
What has Victoria Beckham said about it?
Victoria said the process of making the series has turned her into a ‘reformed control freak’.
She said: ‘When I did my master interviews, of which there were quite a few, it was the first time I’ve ever been forced to look back.
‘Sometimes it made me smile, sometimes it was frustrating because I’m trying to remember things that maybe I’ve blocked out, there’s a few triggers along the way.
‘This has been like a year’s therapy for me. I feel that I went into this process calling myself a control freak and I’ve come out the other end a reformed control freak.
‘I haven’t had the control with this documentary that I have with most elements of my life, and I feel much more content coming out the other end.’
‘I really started to doubt myself and not like myself and because I let it affect me, I didn’t know what I saw when I looked in the mirror,’ Victoria continued.
‘Was I fat? Was I thin? I don’t know, you lose all sense of reality. I was just very critical of myself. I didn’t like what I saw. I have been everything from porky posh to skinny posh, I mean, it’s been a lot and that’s hard.
‘I had no control over what was being written about me or the pictures that were being taken and I suppose I wanted to control that. I could control it with the clothing, I could control my weight. I was controlling my weight in an incredibly unhealthy way.
‘When you have an eating disorder you become very good at lying. And I was never honest about it with my parents.
‘I never spoke about it publicly, it really affects you. When you’re told constantly you’re not good enough. And I suppose that’s been with me my whole life.’
Victoria also recalled a moment when she was weighed live on TV by Chris Evans on his Channel 4 show TFI Friday to see if she had lost her baby weight just months after giving birth to Brooklyn in 1999.
‘I was weighed on national television,’ said Victoria. ‘Get on those scales, have you lost the weight? We laugh about it and we joke about it but I was really, really young and that hurts.’
Elsewhere in the documentary, Victoria seemingly hinted at the family feud with her eldest son, Brooklyn, after she refused to answer a question about him.
Victoria Beckham is streaming on Netflix on 9 October.
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