Nobody really pities the celebrity nepo baby, much less the billionaire heiress, but when they air petty resentments about their famous families, it’s hard to look away. It can be stressful to be born on second or third base, always knowing that you’ll probably never quite equal your highly accomplished, likely somewhat megalomaniac mother or father (or both). And so we have Brooklyn Beckham, who this week went off about his celeb parents, specifically his mother, the Spice Girl turned fashion designer Victoria Beckham, for ruining his life.
Mr. Beckham wrote a series of posts on Instagram, beginning with: “I have been silent for years and have made every attempt to keep these matters private.” He continued, “I do not want to reconcile with my family. I’m not being controlled, I’m standing up for myself for the first time in my life.” He also claimed that his attention-seeking mother “danced very inappropriately on me in front of everyone” at his wedding to Nicola Peltz.
Our story starts out at Coachella in 2017, like any modern fairy tale. He was the 18-year-old eldest son of Victoria and David Beckham, a hot professional soccer player with multiple tattoos. Ms. Peltz was the 22-year-old child of the billionaire investor Nelson Peltz and the former model Claudia Heffner Peltz. The young couple were engaged in 2020 and married in April 2022 at her father’s 13-acre waterfront Palm Beach estate named Montsorrel.
There is, for the nepo, tremendous pressure to escape feeling like a brand extension for your parents. The huge advantages that come with a recognizable name can often create a cycle in which that name becomes the petard one hoists oneself by again and again. Sometimes you marry within your nepo social class. Often these nepo-plus-nepo marriages end in your famous parents paying for your expensive divorce lawyer.
Part of the public appeal of nepo babies is that they are the continuation of their parents’ story. As someone born in the public eye too — my mother, Erica Jong, was no Posh Spice, but was famous in a way that writers just aren’t allowed to be today — I get it. I was, after all, a celebrated, independent woman’s only child, and people often thought they knew me because she had written about me.
Or perhaps you have been photographed since you were a baby, as the younger Mr. Beckham has.
Brooklyn Beckham may have money and good looks and lots of Instagram followers, but his mother actually owns the trademark for his name. (She trademarked his siblings’ names, too.) He has become the nepo baby Everyman, famous for his birth and not much else. He cycled through the usual nepo baby career gestures: He was a model, a photographer. In 2017, he published a book of photographs entitled “What I See.” It turns out Mr. Beckham saw a lot of fuzzy, nebulous images. The book included a photograph of an elephant with the caption, “Elephants in Kenya. So hard to photograph but incredible to see.” He does food stuff on Instagram, has a social media show called “Cookin’ with Brooklyn” and an artisanal hot sauce brand.
Ms. Peltz has experimented with nepo career paths as well: She is an actress, writer, director and model. Her father disavowed President Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and then, according to The New Yorker, appeared to change his mind, deciding during the 2024 primaries that “we can’t afford Joe Biden,” which sounds like code for worrying about more taxes.
These marital alliances between families — one with fame they turned into money, the other with money they turned into fame — have their own perils. The Peltzes are East Coast billionaires (Palm Beach and Westchester) and the Beckhams are British pop culture figures. Nelson Peltz, 83 years old, dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania to ski and work at his family’s food distribution company, which eventually seeded the making of a pile of money. They will be rich and powerful without the attention economy, or without much attention at all. The Beckhams, on the other hand, built a family business upon being famous — which means having fans.
Rumors started after the pair married. First there was the question of why Ms. Peltz didn’t wear a gown by Victoria Beckham. (Instead, she wore Valentino.) She was notably absent at her mother-in-law’s 50th birthday, and then both she and Brooklyn missed David’s 50th last year. In August 2025, to celebrate being married for three whole years, the pair renewed their vows at the Peltzes’ Westchester estate. None of the other Beckhams attended.
It wasn’t until the prodigal nepo baby got on Instagram that all hell broke loose. The internet exploded with memes and conjecture, including fake videos of Ms. Beckham dancing “inappropriately.”
Is Brooklyn actually a hero? Are any of us nepo babies heroes? Probably not. Born on second base but still airing our parental damage on the internet? We are no one’s best-case scenario.
I can see where Brooklyn is coming from. Last year I published a book about my mother and our relationship that wasn’t meant to be retaliatory, but certainly some people saw it that way.
This week David Beckham was in Davos for UNICEF, and though he didn’t address the feud directly, he told a journalist: “They make mistakes. Children are allowed to make mistakes. That’s how they learn. So that’s what I try to teach my kids. But you know, you have to sometimes let them make those mistakes as well.”
Maybe Brooklyn was being immature. As a parent myself, I can see David’s point of view too. But sometimes you just have to tell your own story.
Molly Jong-Fast is the host of the “Fast Politics” podcast and the author of “How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir.”
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