VICTORIA Beckham, erstwhile Spice Girl, now celebrity wife, mother and fashion designer, she of the stick limbs and sulky expression who only ever orders steamed kale in Michelin-starred restaurants, has contributed a feature to style bible ‘Vogue’ magazine entitled, ‘Things I Wish I’d Known at 18’.
It’s pretty pedestrian stuff – agonies over acne, puppy-fat, not fitting in, low self-esteem, lack of confidence etc etc.
For someone burdened with such inadequacies she’s done pretty well for herself. It wasn’t entirely luck.
She did attend stage school, could sing a little and dance a bit and was plucked from obscurity for a girl band made up of diverse personalities as ‘the haughty one’.
Showbiz success thrust her into the social sphere of premier league footballers, specifically David Beckham – beautiful, until he started using his body as an art gallery.
They had a large, vulgar wedding and lived happily ever after. As Damon Runyon put it, “Bein’ around scratch, some of it’s bound to rub off.”
By contrast, we too, labouring under the same crippling self-doubt, were destined to remain in well-deserved obscurity because, in this benighted province opportunity never knocked and Norn Iron’s football players singularly lacked the louche glamour of Manchester United’s.
My generation spent our teens utterly self-absorbed and quaking with insecurity, pretending to be what we weren’t, constantly revising ourselves, turning like weather-vanes in the prevailing wind to adapt to every new set of friends and beset by the terrible doubt that, sooner or later we’d be found out.
All that mattered was what other people thought of us. I passed most of my teens in a paralysis of fright. I remember having a secret passion for bubblegum pop music when all my worldly-wiser friends were into jazz and blues and none of it made any sense to me.
I squirm with retrospective embarrassment at voicing simplistic opinions on topics I knew little about or books I hadn’t read.
And please Lord, don’t let anybody remember the turquoise eyeshadow or the pink linen trouser-suit embroidered up one leg, accessorised with a cigarette holder and a white feather boa. I was my own best invention, covering anxious naivety with a veneer of faux sophistication.
And then there were the crises – the unreasonableness of parents, the disappointing exam results, the turbulent fallings out with best-friends-forever; the rivalries, the envy of the prettier, the more clever, the more self-assured and the unmitigated misery over broken romances.
Life was so unfair. Everybody was on my case. I wanted to be anybody but me. I wouldn’t be that age again if you paid me.
When the hormones settle things generally sort themselves out, though I’m still sick with apprehension at doing anything in public. We all seek approval, the affirmation of our peers.
It’s natural to want to be thought well of – but, by the law of averages, not everyone will recognise you for the uniquely wonderful person you are.
That’s their loss. Age and experience bring their own armour in the form of a thicker skin, better judgment of the character of others and surer-footed social skills.
There’s a great liberation in ageing. It may not bring wisdom, but it does bring a sense of proportion and the realisation that, barring acts of God, nothing much matters in the long run.
There’s a quiet satisfaction in achieving the sunlit uplands of not giving a damn. Of course, having achieved the summit, it doesn’t do to dwell on the fact that logically, it’s all downhill from here.
But we won’t think about that today. Today, we shall dish out sage advice to people who don’t want it, chide strangers doing anti-social things, deliver opinions freely, regardless of the consequences and behave exactly as we wish. Ain’t life grand?
Meanwhile, good luck to Mrs Beckham as she expands her empire into cosmetics this month with the launch of a new range of make-up for Estée Lauder (sulky expression optional). It’s a high price to pay for living on fresh air and edemame beans. No wonder she never looks happy….
