‘I’m so glad Victoria Beckham has talked about her eating disorder’: Anniki Sommerville on why it matters for all of us

Watching Victoria Beckham’s eagerly anticipated documentary on Netflix last night made me feel several things: sad she’d had to navigate so much public scrutiny and hateful commentary in her life – and a massive sense of relief when she revealed that she’d struggled with an eating disorder. She explained that she was ‘never honest’ with her family about her struggles, and didn’t ever speak publicly about it.

Anniki Sommerville

Many, many of us will relate to this, having lived most of our adult lives struggling silently with disordered eating and a problematic relationship with our bodies. Back when the Spice Girls were at their height, which was almost 30 years ago, eating disorders were never talked about. I grew up with a form of eating disorder that shaped most of my early 20s and into my 30s: dysregulated eating (including bingeing). Food occupied my every thought; I was either on a diet or I was breaking the diet through eating excessively. I did this for many, many years and I didn’t tell anyone. I suspect most of my female peer group were doing the same. We were all trying to fit ourselves into a beauty standard that felt nigh on impossible. We were never happy with the way we looked.

Body culture in the noughties and 90s was toxic. I remember the jutting hipbones of Kate Moss, the campaigns to get ‘Beach Body Ready’ and America’s Next Top Model (where contestants’ shape and size was publicly discussed). But none of us were subjected to the very public body-shaming Victoria had to contend with. I remember when she went on a live TV show and was weighed in front of a studio audience, just after she’d had her first child, Brooklyn. Many of us can remember wincing as host Chris Evans bellowed, ‘Eight stone’s not bad at all!’ and the audience cheered. Victoria looked uncomfortable – like anyone being weighed live on TV would.

’I really started to doubt myself,’ Victoria admitted, ‘and not like myself, and because I let it affect me, I didn’t know what I saw when I looked in the mirror. Was I fat? Was I thin? You lose all sense of reality. I was just very critical of myself. I didn’t like what I saw.’

‘I didn’t like what I saw.’ This mirrored the way I felt about my body for many years, yet hardly begins to encapsulate the mental pain that hating your body brings. It’s a constant internal narrative that feels exhausting every time you’re in a shop changing room or at the beach on holiday or heading for a night out with friends. It’s a voice that tells you you’re ugly and fat and not worthwhile. In my case, I always felt like I was failing to live up to the skinny ideal, so I took refuge in comfort eating. I’d eat an entire family bag of crisps or a packet of biscuits and then I’d then beat myself up afterwards for not being more disciplined. And then another diet (I tried so many – fasting, calorie restriction, high protein – you name it; I tried it). It’s a vicious cycle many women never break out of.

I recently chatted to a woman in her 70s at the gym, who told me she was still dieting. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever stop,’ she said. The thought of being on that treadmill for my entire life depressed the hell out of me. That’s why Victoria talking publicly is so important and so brave. We need to share more about the harmful narratives we tell ourselves when it comes to the way we look – narratives that are shaped by the world at large. ‘I’ve been everything from “porky posh” to “skinny posh”. It’s been a lot and that’s hard,’ Victoria said.

The truth is that there is always ‘something wrong’ with the way women look. Either too fat, too skinny, too young or too old. Too much work done or in need of more. Isn’t it ironic that someone who so many women looked up to – someone who looked like she ‘had it all’ – felt the exact same way, trapped in an impossible beauty standard and unable to escape?

Eating disorders are, of course, complex and there are many reasons why people develop them. One common theme however is around regaining a sense of control – for Victoria, she said it was a way to get back the control she’d lost in terms of what people said about her. ‘It really affects you when you’re being told constantly that you’re not good enough and I suppose that has been with me my whole life.’

This was the sad thing that stayed with me when I climbed into bed last night. Eventually, motherhood and menopause has made me focus less on the way my body looks. I’m happy if I feel healthy and look like I’ve had enough sleep. Sometimes I find myself mindlessly snacking and berating myself afterwards, but I now tell myself to be kind and not beat myself up.

None of us are perfect and I don’t want my mindset to rub off on my children. I have two daughters and I don’t want for them to be told that they’re not good enough, too fat, too small, too loud, too timid, too brazen… ‘I tell Harper every day, “Be who you are,”’ Victoria says – a message we should surely all instil in our children.

In her iconic book about beauty culture, The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf says: ‘A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience.’ Perhaps we all need to start being more disobedient.