Friday, July 20, 2007

Posh Problems

Okay, this one is really out of date, but I'm sure you remember all the fuss ...


In a country whose dinner party, playground and even broadsheet debates are based around reality TV shows and public vote ‘celebrity’, little wonder that when it comes to headlines, the real King and Queen of England are going to grab them. Never mind the Euro Referendum or the war in Iraq – Beckham’s golden balls are front page news again, and the kiss’n’tell earwigs are crawling out of the woodwork to talk about just how dirty the King of Ostentania can really play.

For those of you who’ve been potholing in Cheddar Gorge for the last month, Becks has supposedly swapped teams to play with Rebecca Loos, his former PA. I would call Rebecca posh, but someone else has the copyright on that title. But Rebecca is the Real McCoy of snooty, wannabe aristocracy – a very undiplomatic diplomat’s daughter, loaded with inherited wealth and
academic qualifications. Her cut-glass vowels were drummed into her at a Swiss finishing school, Europe is her playground and, for her, Essex is a nightmare away. This Becks is competition indeed for the scrawny former Spice Girl. But the self-proclaimed First Lady of Posh is showing commendable dignity against the kind of adversity that is surely her worst nightmare. She’s behaving like one of our real-life royal family members behave when the shit hits the fan: with her actions-speak-louder-than-words denials, defiant adherence to upper-class celebrity protocol and no-frills stoicism, Posh is, for once, almost living up to her name.

Much vitriol has been unleashed on Victoria Beckham of late. She is, apparently, too thin, too overbearing, too distant, too cloying, too loyal, too tarty, and worse. David strayed because Posh didn’t follow him to Spain; because she ‘forced him’ to have a flashy wedding; because she’s ‘tied him down’ with two kids - the leeches are rolling in shadenfreude as the build ‘em up, knock ‘em down culture continues to thrive. But there’s another age-old pattern in force here: no matter how bad the man’s crimes, it’s always the woman’s fault. David has no doubt devastated his wife, but there’s little sympathy for the victim. The press had a bit of a go at Rebecca at first (well of course they did – she’s a woman, and she’s beautiful); they tried to label her a hooker until her credentials (and, no doubt, an army of lawyers) distinctly proved otherwise. So then it was back to Posh, the easy target. And so it’s been since time immemorial, from abortion laws to Myra Hindley, from Joan of Arc to Lady Diana, for wearing a Burkha or for wearing high heels – women are to blame for everything.

Remember the Ulrika Jonsenn furore? She named and shamed her rapist, and was subsequently blamed for ruining John Leslie’s career. That brave, successful, beautiful woman apparently ‘deserved’ everything she got from Leslie because that’s the price that women should have to pay for ‘having it all’. Sound familiar? But Posh isn’t an Ulrika, with brains, savvy and a real career. And she isn’t a Rebecca Loos, with the understated confidence that a privileged background brings. Posh is just a footballer’s wife, albeit a former teen-idol one with a few million quid of her own in the bank. She’s a mum, a local girl made
good, a young woman who defied her ordinariness and made her fairytale dreams come true. She can’t have expected the world’s ordinary women, let alone the feminist sisterhood and the formerly sycophantic national press, turning against her when the going got tough. Okay, so she probably wasn’t too aware of the sisterhood in the first place, but who is, these days? Feminism sold out long ago, when women started to act like men instead of broadening their horizons. In 2004, Carrie Bradshaw is supposedly a feminist icon and women beware women, leaving Posh to be trampled over as she goes it alone, a victim not only of a philandering man but of national hostility, too.

I never thought I’d see the day when I defended Victoria Beckham – after all, there were no parallels between her life and mine. But she’s a woman whose man has done her wrong; on an in-common basis, Posh should have a whole army of women behind her, not an ever-dwindling team.

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