Come on. You have to pick a side. Either you’re #TeamVictoria or #Team Brooklyn.
To me, it’s easy, because among the many verbal trinkets I remember from my Welsh youth, one in particular resonates at the moment: ‘A daughter is a daughter for all of her life, a son is a son until he takes him a wife.’
Prince Harry, Adam Peaty, Brooklyn Beckham – three men with one thing in common: the rejection of their families when they fell in love with their dream woman. Three heartless, cruel and insensitive putdowns (different, but each as hurtful as the other) of the people who have loved them their whole lives.
Yes, families are complicated and when they fall apart, often spectacularly as we have seen this week, for one’s own wellbeing the only solution is sometimes to move on.
But come on, guys.
Harry. You’ve lived a totally privileged existence courtesy of your mere birthright and you continue to flounce your title because you know it opens doors.
Adam. Your mother made many sacrifices to help you achieve Olympic gold status and you don’t even have the heart to invite her to your wedding?
And so to Brooklyn, the adored firstborn of David and Victoria Beckham, who he now accuses of just wanting to cash in on the Beckham Brand at every conceivable opportunity!
Hello! The brand that provided you with the exposure to bring your less than average photograph snaps to the attention of the world? The brand that has enabled you to become an ‘aspiring chef’.
Who’s still ‘aspiring’ at 26? Marco Pierre White was working for the Roux brothers at La Gavroche when he was 19 and had his first Michelin star at 32.
Most of Brooklyn’s bile is focused on his mother, but according to the Vogue article about his wedding to Nicola Peltz (and pre-approved by the couple before publication), he’s spinning a very different narrative now from what he did then.
I’ve watched Victoria in the Beckham documentary and, more recently in her own three-parter, and one thing shines out above all else: the personal – emotional and professional – sacrifices she has made in the pursuit of her family’s happiness: her husband’s career, most notably during her miserably sojourn in Italy, and her children’s wellbeing.
Providing them with stability during stress and upheaval and putting herself second makes me admire her so much as a wife, mother and a woman having to juggle so many balls in the air.
I can’t begin to imagine the pain she is feeling right now, to be hung out to dry by the son she has worshiped from day one – consigned to the annals of history and facing claims that her behaviour and family life induced in him severe anxiety.
Maybe you should have gone out and got yourself a proper job, mate; then you’d see how much anxiety people have to endure in the real world instead of the gilded cage you’ve been blessed to have grown up in (and now landed yourself in an even more gilded one).
Both your parents are incredibly hard workers and that’s what’s made them the huge successes they have become. You really should try it – or was it just easier to pick up your trophy billionaire in the VIP enclosure at Coachella, doubtless paid for by your parents?
Do you really think Nicola would have looked at you if you’d been Joe Ordinary, scooping up litter from the revellers? Of course not. She bought into your brand as much as you did into hers.
The ease with which all three men have thrown off the mantles of their families (and in two cases, mothers) is baffling to me. I am very lucky in my sister-in-law who, far from enticing my brother away from his family, became a much-loved part of it. And my brother never ditched Mum because he had a new life.
Do some men just possess a gene that enables them to move on more quickly than women? Look how many men quickly marry soon after their wives have died. Or how many chuck away decades of marriage and history in the pursuit of a few final laps round the sexual playing field.
Maybe when Adam and Brooklyn have their own children and start to invest in them, they’ll become more aware of how much sacrifice and commitment is actually involved and rethink their mean and selfish actions towards their mothers.
Somehow, I doubt it, though. Brooklyn’s set up for life with Daddy’s golden girl the billionaire heiress and will probably never set eyes on a nappy; Adam has the Gordon Ramsay empire as his in-laws. How quickly both men (well, man-children, really) were able to shed their pasts with such alarming alacrity when something better came along.
The goose that laid the golden egg is dead. Long live the goose! Especially when Daddy-in-law has so many more eggs in his basket.
The lure of celebrity and/or money is hard to resist for many, especially men of a relatively youthful age when they’re still largely preoccupied with what’s going on in their trousers. Whatever Holly and Nicola are doing in the bedroom now, rest assured it won’t last, guys.
And when it all goes pear-shaped?
You’ll both go crying to Mummy.
I’m putting money on it.
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