Brand Beckham has always been about control
But Brooklyn's 'truth bombs' show David and Victoria's thirst for it extends well beyond the media
Where the Beckham family ends and Brand Beckham begins has long been the cause of debate. Yesterday that conversation came screeching to the forefront of our minds after David and Victoria Beckham’s eldest son Brooklyn, went scorched-earth on his parents.
Across a six-part Instagram story he claimed:
He didn’t want to reconcile with his estranged family
That his parents routinely lied to the media to protect their image and briefed against him and his wife of three years, Nicola Peltz Beckham
David and Victoria tried to “bribe” him into signing away the rights to his name before he married
Victoria quit making a wedding dress for Nicola “at the eleventh hour”
Victoria called Brooklyn “evil” during a row over their wedding seating arrangements
Victoria hijacked the newlyweds' first dance and danced “very inappropriately”
David rejected calls to meet Brooklyn and Nicola privately during celebrations for his 50th birthday
“Family love” is determined by how well members support the “perfect family” narrative on social media
Victoria refused to support Nicola’s attempt to save displaced dogs following the LA fires
Brand Beckham “comes first”
As a long-time observer of the Beckhams, how David and Victoria found themselves in the middle of a spectacular public falling out is obvious — their decades-long obsession with control.
From the earliest days of their romance David and Victoria have sought — and more often than not got — to control their image and manipulate media coverage.
In 1997, when they first met, celebrity magazines were reaching the peak of their powers in Britain. OK!, a new rival to Hello! magazine decided to hitch their wagon to the hot new it couple, who were known back then as Posh and Becks.
OK! not only paid David and Victoria insane amounts of money for photoshoots and puff pieces, they gave the couple approval over the pictures and the accompanying text. According to the autobiography of OK!’s owner, Richard Desmond, executives from the magazine spent “almost every Friday” at the home of Victoria’s parents to “plot and plan the next features we’d do”.
The pinnacle of this arrangement was the £1 million/$1.3 million (£2 million/$2.6 million in today’s money) that OK! paid the Beckhams for exclusive access to, and pictures of, their wedding in 1999. Desmond says the couple stayed up until 3am on their wedding night, deciding which images would be published.
When David was credibly accused of cheating with his assistant in 2004, the couple were able to use the fairytale narrative around their marriage to convince many he was the victim of “ludicrous” claims. After issuing a carefully worded statement, which didn’t deny the affair, the pair posed together, smiling, while on a skiing holiday. Under the rug it went.
When social media took off the Beckhams embraced Instagram as the place to push the stories that once graced the pages of OK!. The Beckhams as one big happy family was a recurring theme, and it was compounded by coordinated posts that zealously tagged family members. The Beckhams’ four children were given their own accounts too, with Cruz aged just 11 when he launched his.
More recently the Beckhams turned to Netflix, and exploited the streamer’s willingness to allow celebrities to create their own “documentaries”. The result was the imaginatively titled Beckham and Victoria Beckham, which portrayed the couple glowingly.
The series, which were produced by their employee Nicola Howson and David’s production company, worked overtime to push how successful they were and through candid moments featuring their four children, that family came first.
According to Brooklyn however, it is, and has always been, Brand Beckham that has been the number one priority. And that David and Victoria’s need for control extends way beyond the media.
“I have been controlled by my parents for most of my life,” he said towards the end of his lengthy statement. He went on to state that since he’s been estranged from his family his “anxiety has disappeared”.
Of all Brooklyn said in his jaw-dropping post, it’s this revelation that I’ve been mulling on the most. Because if you buy, like I do, that the Beckhams have ruthlessly crafted their image for years, that they’ve embellished how romantic their relationship is, have sought to persuade us that their family life is perfect, and that Brand Beckham is a confection created for commercial gain, then it’s easy to see how stressful living in that fake world would be.
David, 50, and Victoria, 51, may not see it that way. To them it’s a way of life that they created. But for their children it sounds like hell. The responsibility to not screw up by saying the wrong thing or to reveal something they shouldn’t must feel like a weight around their necks.
Brooklyn, 26, and Nicola, 31, clearly found the pressure overwhelming. And while critics can say all day long that they think he’s an ungrateful nepo baby, or that his story doesn’t add up, I don’t believe that anyone goes no-contact lightly.
For David and Victoria this episode must be unbelievably painful too. Not only has their relationship with their eldest child gone awry, they’ve lost something they’ve held for decades - a firm grip on their polished image.
highly flammable is produced and written by me, Rachel Richardson
I’m a content creator, commentator and a consultant for hire at Beginning, Middle and End
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A great piece Rachel. I am desperate for an hours-long chat with someone dissecting Brooklyn's stories and "Brand Beckham". Despite what people may think, no child estranges from their parents without a good reason - especially in Brooklyn's case, where he's likely saying goodbye to millions in inheritance. When he is putting his own reputation on the line to get the record straight, I can't help but feel he was at his wit's end with it all.
I have always seen Posh and Becks as very controlled. I couldn't imagine growing up with that lifestyle.
Estrangement is having a moment. I think, like many topics, people are willing to talk about it more now, but that doesn't change how difficult it is to estrange oneself from family. More to the point, I thin you made your point very well, brand is about control, and over the top control is a driver of estrangement, addiction is another. Those two things control and addiction can also go together.