Another day and another olive branch from David Beckham is snubbed by his increasingly absent son Brooklyn Peltz Beckham.
Posting to Instagram on Father’s Day, the former footballer wrote, ‘My most important and favourite job in life is being a dad… I’m so proud of all of you and like daddy (sorry boys) tells you every single day I will always be here for you no matter what.’
A touching tribute that went unacknowledged by his first-born amid a family feud that has seen both the footballer’s 50th birthday and his recent knighthood pass without so much as a thumbs up emoji from his eldest child.
Yes, the 26-year-old one-time photographer, hot sauce-hawker and sandwich-making ‘chef’ seems, for the time being at least, to have cut the apron strings.
Simmering tensions since his lavish $3 million nuptials to billionaire heiress wife Nicola Peltz have apparently escalated and it’s clear where his loyalties lie as the digs just keep on coming.
We’ve seen the online gushing – notably Peltz’s own Father’s Day tribute in the absence of anything from her husband. Then there was Brooklyn’s ‘Mamma’s boy’ tattoo replaced with an inking of his wife’s wedding bouquet (ouch) and, last week, the big reveal of a Peltz-penned love note tattooed on the back of his neck.
Part love-struck teen, part backstabbing brat, it’s all quite the middle finger to the tight knit family whose $450 million fortune has seen Brooklyn blessed with a gilded life and offered seemingly every opportunity.
While all evidence suggests Brooklyn needs to grow up and make amends, he’s unlikely to be in any rush to take responsibility when too many people are making excuses for him.
You see, while the rift has derailed the tightly-controlled Beckham brand, the public blame game seems to be following the same old script – the one in which we’re all too quick to vilify the woman when their partner becomes problematic.
Yes, according to his fans and ‘close friends’, poor old Brooklyn is seemingly little more than a ‘hostage’ controlled and isolated by the woman they see as his spoiled, rich wife, who is used to getting her own way. She’s even, predictably, being publicly pitted against her mother-in-law, Victoria Beckham, in the ultimate battle for Brooklyn’s devotion.
Indeed, the Beckham feud is rumored to be rooted in Peltz’s refusal to wear a Victoria Beckham designed wedding dress – yes, the cheek of it!
It’s an age-old trope: History is littered with examples of wives branded arch manipulators as soon as their partner veers off course. Opinions and independence seem so easily conflated with demanding diva.
Take the most famous example of all, John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono. Her unforgivable ‘crime’ was to simply marry a Beatle.
At the age of 92, she’s still carrying the vitriolic weight of imploding the biggest band in history (nothing to do, of course, with the long-term tensions and rivalry between Lennon and Paul McCartney).
Then there’s the judgement and ridicule that came with Jennifer Lopez’s efforts to cheer up sulky 52-year-old man-child Ben Affleck during their 2.0 rematch. The singer and actress was painted as a desperate control freak, rather than the grown up in a relationship who was trying to build bridges with a blended family.
Was it really worth the effort? As she finally admitted defeat, boorish Ben simply skulked off to sniff around some 15 years his junior, Kick Kennedy.
And just how did eternal golden boy Brad Pitt – at 61 sporting a tie-dyed (late) midlife crisis wardrobe and half-his-age girlfriend Ines de Ramon – come out of his nuclear split from Angelina Jolie so relatively unscathed?
An explosive row on a plane in 2016 saw the actor accused of physical and verbal abuse toward her and their children, but it’s Angelina who has been roundly cast as the villain for turning the children against him.
More to the point, does Meghan Markle, for all her (many) faults, deserve to be forever framed as the main orchestrator of her and Harry’s decision to leave the Royal Family and relocate to Montecito?
Not really.
The subtext that Prince Harry, then fourth in line to the throne, was wrenched from his family and an idyllic life at the palace has always been some way off the mark. His 2017 interview with the Mail on Sunday, the year before he met Meghan, revealed he had spent many years ‘Kicking his heels’ and ‘wanted out’ of The Firm but stayed out of loyalty to the late Queen.
Of course, the parallels between the Sussexes and the Peltz Beckhams are stark and plentiful, and it’s not just their choice of lawyers – Brooklyn and Nicola have reportedly retained the services of Jenny Afia who specializes in ‘reputation management’ and has previously acted for the Sussexes.
Like Brooklyn, Harry has been complicit in the estrangement from his family, but again, much of his hot-headed actions and the snubbing of his own flesh and blood are buffered by claims he’s simply ‘under the thumb,’ with Meghan left to take the heat.
Undoubtedly, both men – restless, born into privilege and unlikely to join Mensa International – were malleable and ripe for fresh direction at the hands of their smarter and (slightly) older American wives, women who appear unafraid to challenge the status quo.
But it doesn’t absolve them from all responsibility. After all, it is their blood relatives, the people who have had their back for a lifetime, from whom they have pulled away.
So, isn’t it time the focus switched to their accountability, instead of foisting the blame on their other halves?
