When it comes to separating her home life from her work life, Victoria Beckham is nothing if not realistic. In a new feature with the Guardian, the designer, mother of four and, as the magazine puts it, half of "one of the world's most scrutinized" couples, offers a peek inside her hectic yet intensely controlled life. Between the demands of turning her popular brand into a real moneymaker, the paparazzi pressure and the seemingly never-ending wonder about the state of her marriage to David Beckham, the former singer has plenty of juggling to do — but she's clearly found a way to handle it.
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"People are interested in my personal life," Victoria acknowledges. "And sometimes that works in my favor and sometimes it's things that I don't like. I'm not going to let it get me down."
Recalling how she told her children when they were younger that the paparazzi were taking their pictures so their grandparents could keep up with them, she clearly gets that she and David have chosen a path that comes with its own challenges — including the cameras, which don't take a break around her kids.
"It was a way of explaining it to them when they were too young to understand," she says of the grandparents line. "They are used to it now. They've all grown up with it. They understand that they have to act in a responsible way because of it. But they will make mistakes — we all do. And theirs will be in the public eye."
The 44 year old also opens up about how she and David have managed their careers while raising Harper, Romeo, Cruz and Brooklyn Beckham.
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"A project like Reebok is international, so there is traveling involved," she says of her new collaboration with the sneaker line. "But it's workable. I mean, the emails from the kids' schools come on my phone wherever I am, I can still deal with stuff. And, don't get me wrong, I have help. I have a cleaner, so I don't have to wash or iron. And I have someone who helps me with the children, who is wonderful and who I trust implicitly. David does a huge amount of traveling, and that's so hard on him."
Victoria quietly works David's name into the interview repeatedly. Asked point blank about the split rumors that have swirled around her and her soccer star husband — often at the expense of publicity about decade-long success in fashion — Victoria hits the Guardian reporter with "an unblinking stare," saying only, "It can get quite frustrating. But I leave it to my PR team. I don't get involved."
According to the news outlet, she then moves the conversation away from her marriage — sort of.
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In one magazine interview she recalls, "I had a plate of fruit from M&S, which my assistant went out to get," yet the story claimed she had demanded high-end food from the iconic London eatery, the Ivy. "You do have to be quite controlling because people do believe what they read, and when it's completely fabricated, that's really annoying," Victoria says.
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Speaking of fabrications, chatter around whether Posh Spice will pop up on the Spice Girls reunion tour has not died down even though Victoria has said publicly she won't be returning to the stage. Asked if that was a tough decision to make, she says: "Not at all. What I do now is my passion and a full-time job. I'm excited to see it, though. And I'm sure when I'm there and they are on stage, there will be a part of me that feels a bit left out. Because even after all this, a part of me will always be a Spice Girl."
