From the outside, Victoria Beckham appears to have it all: a successful career as a fashion designer and beauty entrepreneur – not to mention her iconic legacy as a Spice Girl. But, in the first episode of British Vogue contributing editor Sinéad Burke’s podcast, entitled As Me With Sinéad, Beckham reveals the struggle she had fitting in until she joined the girl band in 1995.
“It wasn’t until I met the Spice Girls, to be completely honest, that I think I truly found my personality,” Beckham told Burke. “[I learned] that actually it’s OK to have a laugh. It’s OK to be silly. It’s OK if you tell a joke and people don’t laugh. If it had not been for my time in the Spice Girls, maybe I would still be the person that I was then, and I’m much more fun now. They made it OK to be me.”
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Beckham went on to admit that she “struggled at school” and labelled herself a “misfit”. “You know I was a bit of an underdog that actually did work,” she explained. “When I was at college and all the other girls were being sent on auditions and were getting great jobs, I wasn’t even allowed to go because there was no point... The Spice Girls made not just girls but girls and boys feel it was OK to be different. It was OK to be the odd one out.”
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Beckham is all too aware of the positive impact the Spice Girls had during their heyday – and even now. “The amount of people that say to me, ‘The Spice Girls changed my life, because actually they made it OK, you know, to be me,’” Beckham told Burke. “We [Mel B, Mel C, Geri and Emma] were all misfits in our own little way. But we worked together. And I think that every girl in some way could relate to one of us. Every girl wanted to be friends with one of us. At the time, there was something for everyone and none of us were perfect. Like I said, we were underdogs. But together we worked. It was a very powerful message.”
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Beckham weaves that same message into her work today. “I think being kind is really, really important... It takes up much more energy to be a mean person,” she said. “I like to make other people feel good and feel like the best version of themselves. That’s why I do what I do... It started with ‘girl power’ [in] the Spice Girls and now it’s that same [empowering message], but through fashion and beauty.”
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