Embracing their curves. Victoria Beckham says women no longer want to be incredibly thin — and that beauty standards for women have changed.
“It’s an old-fashioned attitude, wanting to be really thin,” the fashion designer, 48, told Grazia in an interview published on Monday, May 16. “I think women today want to look healthy, and curvy. They want to have some boobs – and a bum.”
Beckham explained that quarantining with her family in Miami, Florida, for a portion of the COVID-19 pandemic helped open her eyes to the way women are embracing their curves more than ever before. “There are a lot of really curvy women in Miami, and they really own it, you know?” she told the outlet. “They walk along Miami beach with not a lot of clothes on, and they look fantastic. They show their bodies off with such confidence. I found both their attitude and their style really liberating.”
She continued: “And as a mother, I loved that Harper was around women who were really celebrating their curves and enjoying how they look.”
The Spice World star shares four children with husband David Beckham: Brooklyn, 23, Romeo, 19, Cruz, 17, and Harper Seven, 10.
As she’s gotten older, Beckham has begun to prioritize happiness and relaxed her famously strict diet and workout routines. “It’s not about being a certain size. It’s about knowing who you are and being happy with who you are,” the former Spice Girl explained. “I have found my own balance between wanting to have fun and being disciplined about eating healthily and working out. When you’re younger you fight against that balance, but through being older I’ve reached a place where I know what that balance looks like. I just know what works for me.”
Beckham has previously been open about her struggles with body image, revealing in a September 2016 essay for British Vogue that she felt she was “too plump” as a teenager. “I know you are struggling right now,” the England native wrote in a letter to her 18-year-old self for the magazine. “You are not the prettiest, or the thinnest, or the best at dancing at the Laine Theatre Arts college. You have never properly fitted in, although you are sharing your Surrey school digs with really nice girls.”
She continued: “You have bad acne. You think the principal has put you at the back of the end-of-year show (in a humiliatingly bright purple Lycra leotard) because you are too plump to go at the front. (This may or may not be true.)”
In the piece, Beckham noted that she often looks back on her teenage self with a lot of affection. “You are going to have so much fun with your clothes — PVC catsuits; chokers that say absurd things; weird spiky blonde hair … But I look back at you and smile,” she wrote.
