Victoria Beckham talks about being a mom to her 3 sons, daughter: ‘It’s less about parenting and more about crowd control’
Victoria Beckham has a very busy life.
When the fashion mogul isn't working around the clock for her beauty line, the former Spice Girl, 48, is working just as hard at keeping up with the busy lives of her children — boys Brooklyn, 23, Romeo, 20 and Cruz, 17, and daughter Harper, 11, all of whom she shares with her soccer star husband, David Beckham, 47.
"I feel blessed to have experienced both: being a mother to boys and also a girl. But also, four is a lot of kids," she mused to Dax Shepard on his podcast, Armchair Expert. "It’s less about parenting and more about crowd control."
She added, ”Can you imagine all the [soccer] boots and [soccer] socks, and smelly [soccer] shirts — and that’s just David! It was a lot, but they’re all amazing. And the boys are so good with their little sister. They really are, so it’s lovely to see."
Indeed, for the singer-turned-fashion-entrepreneur, having a busy lifestyle is in her blood.
"I was never the most talented. I always had to work really hard at it," she explained of early life in southern England. "I just made the best of what I was. I was pretty average."
Being one-fifth of the Spice Girls, one of the most successful girl groups in music history, helped give her the confidence she needed to be herself — which, she explained, led her to discover what she really wanted to be in life: a fashion designer and a mom.
"I don’t think I would have ever come out of my shell if I hadn’t met the other Spice Girls," she explained. "I was very self-conscious when I was growing up, and the girls gave me confidence to be me. I would never have had the confidence [to enter fashion] before, so I do it owe that to them 100 percent. I’m a completely different person to how I would have been."
Her dreams collided upon discovering she was pregnant with her first son while on tour in America.
"I found out I was pregnant when I was on tour, and the first show in America was August in Miami in an amphitheater," she remembers. "Honestly, I was in a catsuit that was expanding by the day. I had a wig on to try and get the humidity under control. And I had a bucket on the side of the stage that I was throwing up in constantly because I had such bad morning sickness with Brooklyn."
She added, ”Morning sickness doesn’t mean you’re only sick in the morning, let me tell you!"
Now that her kids are mostly grown, they are showing themselves to be just as opinionated as their mother — especially when it comes to fashion trends.
While reflecting on her style evolution in a recent cover story for Vogue Australia, Victoria recalled Harper being unimpressed by certain looks — including the micro-mini skirts that are seeing a resurgence.
"She's not one of these kids who are going out with a full face of make-up and a crop top. She actually said to me recently, 'Mummy, I've seen some pictures of you when you were in the Spice Girls and your skirts were just unacceptable. They were just too short,'" she said. "Then David piped up and said, 'Absolutely, Harper! They really, really were.' And she was actually quite disgusted at how short my skirts were. I said, 'Are you never going to wear skirts like that?' She said, 'Absolutely not.' We'll see."
Still, Victoria says she's using these conversations to instill ideas of healthy beauty standards in her little one.
"Seeing how cruel people can be, yes it really does [concern me]," Victoria explained. "She's at that age where her body is going to start changing, but it's about making sure that we communicate a lot as a family and she surrounds herself with nice friends. But it is quite terrifying, I can't lie."
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