“Little girls still fixate on food—it’s still a huge topic at school,” the fashion designer shared on the Call Her Daddy podcast. She also opened up about how other women reacted after she spoke about her eating disorder struggles in her upcoming Netflix docuseries.
Victoria Beckham is getting real about why she decided to share her decades-long history with an eating disorder with her teenage daughter. During Wednesday’s episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, the 51-year-old revealed she sat down with 14-year-old Harper—her youngest child with husband David Beckham—before her Netflix doc dropped. In the series, Beckham gets vulnerable about years of struggling with body image and having an “unhealthy” relationship with food and her weight.
Beckham noted she never planned to talk about her eating disorder in the documentary; it just came out naturally. But she’s been struck by how many people—including her own daughter—have connected with her honesty. “What’s really interesting is how many women have reached out to me—either messaging me or coming up to me after watching the doc—to say they relate,” she told Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper. “Of course I talked to Harper about it, since she’s seen the documentary too. And it’s a reminder that little girls still obsess over food—it’s still a big conversation at school.”
She added, “If my experience with this, with my story, can help someone or encourage them to speak up, that’s another really good reason I’m glad I did this.”
Beckham also recalled having a chat with Harper right before the Victoria Beckham brand’s premiere event—since she hadn’t seen the documentary’s final cut until that night. “I wanted to talk to her because I hadn’t watched the final edit before the premiere… I knew I’d talked about my eating disorder on camera, so I figured that part might still be in there,” she said. “I spent some time walking her through it so she could understand what I went through.”
When describing what living with an eating disorder was like, Beckham didn’t hold back: “It makes you miserable—so sad, so lonely, and it takes over every part of your life. For years, I was physically there, but I wasn’t truly present. That’s such a tough place to be, and the only way through it is to talk about it.”
The former Spice Girls star—who also shares sons Brooklyn, 26, Romeo, 23, and Cruz, 20, with David—also looked back on the intense media scrutiny she faced early in her career, especially when it came to her weight. She said that attention only made her body image struggles worse. “When I joined the Spice Girls, people talked about me nonstop—especially my weight. One minute I was ‘Porky Posh,’ the next I was ‘Skinny Posh,’” she explained. “It messes with your head. I had no idea what I actually looked like when I stared in the mirror—I lost all sense of reality. It’s so consuming, so tiring, and it takes over your life.”
On top of that, Beckham admitted she didn’t tell anyone about her struggle at the time—even David, whom she married in 1999. “David has always known I’m really disciplined about what I eat,” she told Cooper. “But back then, I was too scared to talk to anyone—I didn’t feel like I could trust anyone. So I had to work through it on my own, and eventually turn that unhealthy obsession with food into a healthy relationship.”
She credited David with helping her find balance, too. “He helped me realize it’s all about being healthy—not just about food, but about working out too,” Beckham said. “He’s the one who switched up my workout routine. Before, I was just doing cardio, cardio, cardio—all I cared about was burning calories. He encouraged me to start weight training, and now we even work out together.”
In the end, Beckham said her main goal is simple: “Being the best version of myself.” And she hopes to lift up other women along the way. “That’s what I’m all about,” she shared. “I want to empower women—whether it’s through fashion, through beauty—to just be their best selves.”