In the last decade, a spate of pop culture examining how the media mistreated famous women in the 1990s and 2000s has recontextualized their stories. Jordan Peele produced a docuseries on Lorena Gallo nee Bobbitt in 2019, which reframed her narrative as an alleged victim of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. Monica Lewinsky’s story got a Ryan Murphy adaptation in Impeachment: American Crime Story in 2021. Also in 2021, Britney Spears was the subject of the New York Times-produced documentary Framing Britney Spears which was instrumental in ending her 13-year conservatorship later that year. Spears told her own story in the 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me, which, along with a flood of memoirs by other maligned women, such as Jessica Simpson, Pamela Anderson, and Paris Hilton, prompted questions about our complicity in their mistreatment.
The latest aughts-era tabloid figure being reconsidered is Victoria Beckham, in Netflix’s three-part documentary series of the same name dropping on Thursday. Beckham is primarily now known as a pop star-turned-fashion designer, the latter of which Victoria Beckham centers on as it follows her Spring/Summer 2025 show at Paris Fashion Week, interspersed with old footage and interviews with her, her husband David Beckham, and their famous friends and acquaintances. Those who didn’t grow up with the Spice Girls might forget that Beckham, or “Posh Spice,” was considered haughty and standoffish, compared to her other, more gregarious bandmates: “Scary Spice” Melanie Brown, “Sporty Spice” Melanie Chisholm, “Ginger Spice” Geri Halliwell-Horner, and “Baby Spice” Emma Bunton. She was also perceived as the weakest singer in the band, which she acknowledges in the documentary: “I’d be lying if I said I was the best singer or dancer.”
After the Spice Girls broke up in 1998, Beckham was a constant target of criticism by the the worst tabloids, which found something to…
