Before the premiere of her self-titled docuseries,Victoria Beckham sat down with her 14-year-old daughter Harper Beckham to chat about one of the most sensitive confessions in the video: her eating disorder.
“I’ve talked to Harper about it, obviously, because she’s obviously seen the documentary,” Beckham said on Wednesday’s episode of Call Her Daddy, per PEOPLE. “And little girls still obsess over food. It’s still a big conversation at school.”
The fashion designer said that she wanted to get ahead of the conversation before her daughter watched docuseries. “I talked to her because I hadn’t seen the final edit until the premiere… I thought that this might have been left in because obviously I knew that I talked about it. And so I just spent a bit of time talking to her about it so she could understand,” she explained.
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“When you have an eating disorder, it makes you miserable,” Victoria continued. “It is sad. It is lonely. It is all-consuming. I was present for many years, but not truly present. And, you know, that’s really tough, and you just gotta talk about it.”
What an incredibly difficult thing to open up about, not just in a Netflix series, but to your daughter as well. All mothers truly do want better for our kids than we had, and I love that Victoria made sure to talk to her teen about this challenging topic.
In the past, the former Spice Girl talked about protecting Harper from vicious online trolls and body-shamers. “Harper isn’t on social media, so we don’t have to worry about [body-shaming] just yet,” Victoria, who shares Harper with husband David Beckham, told Vogue Australia in 2022. “But seeing how cruel people can be, yes, it really does [concern me].”
“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,” she said, adding, “But it is quite terrifying, I can’t lie.”
An estimated 28.8 million Americans will have an eating disorder in their lifetime, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. The organization says 77 percent of children as young as 12 dislike their bodies and by 14, 60 to 70 percent of girls are trying to lose weight. It breaks my heart as a mom, and these stats just go to show why it’s so important to having open communication with our kids about these complex issues.