Victorian attitude raises its ugly head: ThePost.ie


TCH Archives > Sunday Business Post > 2004/04/18 > Victorian attitude raises its ugly head

Victorian attitude raises its ugly head
Sunday, April 18, 2004

By Jennifer O Connell

Victoria Beckham has said she was bullied as a schoolgirl. Undeniably, there is something about her that just makes you want to snap the head off all her Barbies.

It could be the tacky singularity of her purpose - she seems to exist only to fill tabloid column inches, spreads in Heat magazine and bank accounts. Perhaps it's the permanent sullen glare, replaced in recent days by a permanent frozen grin (which seems only marginally more natural than most of her other assets.)

Or maybe we just hate her for appearing to have it all so effortlessly - plenty of money, two lovely children, long fingernails, a discount card for all the top designer boutiques, a husband who cleans the fridge and what might still be called a career.

According to the News of the World, it is for the latter prize that we ought to despise her most of all. The "lonely soccer ace", the paper recounted sadly when it first reported the allegations of David Beckham's affair, would neverhave strayed if hiswife hadn't forced him to leave Man Utd for Real Madrid - and then failed to follow him there.

On the face of it, it was a straightforward but sad story - a very public marriage falling very publicly apart. But cast a quick eye over the British media reports since allegations of the affair with Rebecca Loos first emerged on April 4, and it seems there's a more sinister phenomenon at play.

Some women, it seems, are intent on having a mind of their own. Yes, really. New man novelist Tony Parsons first raised the alarm in the Dáily Mirror when he lamented: "Letting Loos be Beckham's PA was like locking Mata Hari in a room with the Dustin Hoffman character in Rain Man. He was always going to get eaten alive. David was suddenly expected to live the life of a single man in Spain. He could hardly be blamed for acting like one."

Amanda Platell picked up the theme in the Dáily Mail: "Who could blame the poor soul?" she wrote. "Victoria is greedy, grafting and graceless."

Of course, if Victoria's bad - or even bad, brassy and bossy - then Rebecca Loos is evil beyond alliteration.To the Sun, she was "one Loos woman" with a lurid sex life, who - and readers of a sensitive disposition should turn away now - "always got what she wanted."

Logic would suggest that, a full fortnight into Textgate, we should be rallying to the defence of Victor ia Beckham. If she once seemed to have it all, she has even more now.

Diana might have had to suffer "three of us in this marriage".

In Posh's case, there's the three of them - plus the Spanish `Jordan'; the model-cum-call girl; the Swedish beauty; the media fixers; the former Castro spy turned chauffeur; the tabloid editors; the army of photographers; and the Greek chorus of in-laws that seems to accompany the couple everywhere they go.

Can there be a woman who didn't wince when she read the comment that reportedly came from the Posh camp? "The tone of the text messages are just not David.They never send sexy texts to each other, so she can't imagine him doing it with someone he barely knows." Ouch.

But instead of an outpouring - or even a slight trickle - of sympathy, every humiliating revelation has been greeted with sneers and I-told-you-sos. Even last week's pregnancy rumour failed to elicit any empathy. The Popbitch website broke the news: "Posh is seven weeks pregnant (according to the people she's getting to leak the good news about her)", it sniggered.

Only Lynda Lee-Potter of the Dáily Mail seemed to be able to muster up any sympathy for her, noting that Victoria may have had breast implants, they were at least "done to please her husband, which is scarcely the sign of a frigid woman". Fulsome praise indeed.

There's something deeply nasty about the reaction of the media - which is, after all, just a mirror of society - to the whole affair. It's not even enough to blame the tabloids either - dozens of broadsheet column inches have been devoted to Posh bashing too. If we truly believe Victoria Beckham ought to give up her career or risk sacrificing her husband to one - or a small army - of those clever temptresses who succeed in seducing men entirely against their own will, then shouldn't we all give in now and go back to baking bread?

For years after the couple first met, Victoria earned more than David. In 2001, when he became England captain, the balance shifted. But by then,Victoria had been generating independent income for five years already. Few would dispute that she was the brains behind the global marketing machine that is Beckham Inc. We may not much like her, but only a fool would refuse to admire her.

Yet while her husband has been regarded with widespread sympathy and sneaking admiration over the allegations of his infidelity, she has been vilified, berated and sniggered at.

"Fake breasts, fake hair, fake nails, fake smiles - Victoria Beckham shouldn't be that surprised that her `perfect' marriage turns out to be just another big sham," sneered Tony Parsons.

"She was the girl who had everything and she put it all at risk by absurdly pursuing a singing career that was already dead in the water. She played Russian roulette with her marriage by hanging out with a little nobody, like record producer Damon Dash,when she should have been by her husband's side."

Equality between the sexes is meaningless as long as such archaic attitudes to women prevail.