The recently resurfaced video of Victoria Beckham being weighed on live TV two months after giving birth has sparked intense backlash on social media, where viewers have condemned the “dehumanising” treatment.
In 1999, the former Spice Girls singer appeared on the show Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush with Chris Evans, where the host praised Beckham’s postpartum weight loss just weeks after she’d given birth to her and David Beckham’s son Brooklyn.
“Is your weight back to normal?” Evans asked at one point, to which Beckham responded: “Yeah, it is.”
The host then proceeded to ask if he could “check,” before taking a scale from under his desk.
As Beckham told Evans: “This is horrible,” he encouraged her to step on the scale in front of him, the live audience and viewers. The host then read Beckham’s weight aloud, before telling her: “Not bad at all.”
After Beckham addressed the segment in a new interview with Vogue Australia for its July issue, in which she said: “He made me stand on the scales to be weighed. Can you imagine doing that nowadays?” the video began circulating on social media, where others have been outraged by the clip.
“I fully believe that this sort of stunt and the things that Victoria got called and the whole culture in the 90s contributed to my relationship with food and my weight now,” one person tweeted.
On TikTok, where the video has also circulated, viewers have also expressed their disgust. “How dehumanising,” one viewer wrote, while another said: “My god this is actually shocking.”
Others revealed that they remembered seeing the segment when it aired, and that it was equally shocking then.
“I remember, it was shameful then too,” one viewer said, while someone else wrote: “I remember watching this live, it was horrific at the time. This wasn’t okay even back then.”
The video also prompted many to share their gratitude that attitudes have changed in the years since the segment was taped, and that such treatment towards women would not be tolerated today.
“As a parent of a 13 year old, thank goodness times have changed and the world we live in has evolved,” one viewer said.
Another wrote: “Jeez that’s outrageous, thank god times have moved on.”
While reflecting on the experience with Vogue Australia, Beckham also acknowledged the public’s fixation with her weight, with the designer revealing that she has been called everything from “Porky Posh” to “Skeletal Posh”.
“After I had Brooklyn, there was a picture on the front page of a newspaper pointing to every single part of my body where I had to focus on losing the weight from,” she said.
Beckham’s comments come after she told Grazia earlier this year that she believes being “thin” is a “really old-fashioned attitude,” and that “women today want to look healthy, and curvy”.
“It’s not about being a certain size. It’s about knowing who you are and being happy with who you are,” she said.
The Independent has contacted a representative for Chris Evans for comment.
