the times | Wednesday April 13 2022 7
times2
13-year status as her legal decision-
maker, one who allegedly paid his
daughter an allowance of $2,000 a
month and himself one of $16,000 out
of her fortune.
“I want to be able to get married and
have a baby,” Spears told a court in
June. Instead she had been forced to
go on tour and to rehab, to take
medicine she didn’t want, and was
prevented from having a contraceptive
coil device removed.
A second chance at love and a baby
just before nature’s cut-off point? No
wonder the world is delighted for her!
This is a happy ending straight out of
Disney, the channel where Spears
started her career, as a Mouseketeer
aged 12 after a childhood of audition
circuits and talent shows. No one
could argue that she hasn’t had to
work for her fame.
By way of
contrast, the
world met
Brooklyn Beckham
essentially as a zygote,
although it wasn’t until
his birth in 1999, and
subsequent naming, that
we discovered where he
had apparently been
conceived. The eldest Beckham son
has had a tricky line to tread: celebrity
children are only cute until they’re
not, after which they’re expected to
pipe down and enjoy the riches. This
puts Beckham and his ilk into a
strangely anachronistic category of
someone with income but no work.
Born not into a long line of aristo-
flâneurs but to parents who slogged
their way through football academy
and the music industry’s star-maker
machinery, one can imagine thatBrooklyn has some sense of needing a
purpose in life too. Alas, his work ethic
has manifested in unfortunate ways.
From a photography book that
showcased about as much flair for the
medium as Pippa Middleton had for
party-planning to a bungled TV
appearance in his new guise as
celebrity chef, he comes across not as
striver but as silver-spooner.
When it comes to piss-taking, given
the culture wars and constant
privilege-checking that the internet
requires, the only way to punch is up.
Now is not a good time to be a rich
white guy handed opportunities on the
basis of surname.
Twenty years ago wasn’t a good
moment to be a young women, either.
Spears was shark bait for rising porn
culture, required to be hyper-sexual
yet hyper-virginal in every outing,
posing with cuddly toys and in thongs
on magazine covers. She was asked
creepy questions in interviews and
hounded by paparazzi while pregnant,
while carrying her young children,
even while losing custody of them. She
came unstuck in front of the cameras
at a time when mainstream primetime
TV was geared around laughing at
vulnerable people on The X Factor.
The ogling world owes her a break,
even as it continues to be grateful for
her habit of oversharing on Instagram.
This week is a tale of two types of
modern celebrity. Spears came of age
during a far more gladiatorial bread
and circuses era of fame, while
Beckham gives the impression of
having been given everything on a
plate. Luckily for him we are a little
kinder to people in the spotlight these
days — unless, of course, they have
done nothing to deserve the attention.H
e’s the son of a
footballer and a pop
star turned fashion
queen, she’s the
daughter of a
billionaire. Of course
I was interested in
Brooklyn Beckham
and Nicola Peltz’s wedding.
It may be deeply unfashionable to
admit it post-pandemic, but I’m
obsessed with celebrities — maybe
even more so since they disappeared
during lockdown. Red carpets, front
rows, new hairstyles: these are my
lifeblood. I graduated from the
University of Heat magazine in the
early Noughties with a PhD in the
Primrose Hill set. So I could hardly
wait to see the pictures from their
wedding at the weekend.
The gown — Valentino couture, just
the right balance of tasteful trad and
modern cool. The uber-fashion
Versace platform heels that I liked but
knew none of my friends would. The
first dance song — lol! Only Fools Rush
In for the wedding of a 27-year-old
woman to a 23-year-old man is
precisely the sort of personality-lite
decision only celebrities would make.
I could feel the perfect Vogue-sourced
details hitting my synapses — would
have liked more on the canapés, if I’m
honest — but was surprised to find
that the whole thing left me a little
cold. It was as though I couldn’t quite
summon the enthusiasm to be as
entertained as I used to be by it all.
Then I realised my friends hadn’t even
been in touch about the shoes that
they would definitely have hated.
Have we turned a corner in
celebrity-stalking? I think I already
know the answer, but is watching
enormously rich people you don’t
know a bit unedifying these days? Sad
news if so, because everybody loves a
celebrity wedding. Don’t they?
Apparently not if it costs £15 million.
On paper Beckham and Peltz kept
things classy with their Palm Beach
nuptials, insisting on privacy and
banning social media at the event.
That hasn’t stopped them and it being
held up as everything that is wrong
with modern celebrity. Bit unfair.
They aren’t proper celebrities, after all,
just rich people now in joint
possession of a famous surname.
I wasn’t alone in not feeling the
buzz. The lavish ceremony was held at
Peltz’s 27-bedroom, $76 million family
estate in Florida and is rumoured to be
the priciest since Petra Ecclestone’s. It
ran for three days, had 300 guests and
has been compared unfavourably to
everything from the war in Ukraine to
the cost-of-living crisis.
Contrast reactions to yesterday’s
announcement from the singer
Britney Spears — an actual celebrity,
worth an estimated $70 million — that
she is pregnant with her third child at- The fact was delivered on
Instagram between videos of her
posing in skimpy clothes and rolling
around topless on a beach. “I’m so
excited!” said someone on Twitter.
“She deserves to be happy,” wrote
another. I had cheery texts from three
pals before I’d even left for work.
At one time the direction of the
judgment and bitchy comments in
these two scenarios might have looked
very different. But in the 23
years since Beckham’s
parents sold their
wedding pictures for a
record-breaking
£1 million and Spears
released the album
that made her an
international star,
the ways in which
fame triggers our
empathy, envy and
eye-roll reflexes have
almost completely reversed.
That’s partly because we are still
doing penance for the celebrity era our
consciences forgot. The era during
which, not unrelatedly, Spears had her
first two children, got divorced, had a
public breakdown and was put into a
legal conservatorship that controlled
not only her finances but her fertility
as well. That arrangement came to an
end in November after a long court
battle with her father to overturn his
I’m invested in Britney’s happy
ever after — but not Brooklyn’s
Why do so many
people care about
her pregnancy —
yet not about the
Beckham wedding,
asks Harriet Walker
Have weturned acorner incelebritystalking?I think Iknow theanswerJOHN SHEARER, MATT WINKELMEYER, KMAZUR/GETTY IMAGESBrooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz.
Right: Britney Spears and Sam
Asghari. Below: Spears at the 2001
MTV Video Music Awards