The Beckhams play birthday tag

It’s been about a month and a half since Brooklyn Peltz-Beckham went rogue with a series of scathing Instagram stories that took aim at his parents, his siblings and Brand Beckham.

Since that burst of activity and a few back-and-forth stories about the Wedding Dance From Hell, it’s been somewhat of a ceasefire. The Beckhams keep their united front and Brooklyn and Nicola keep posting photos of… whatever it is they do.

But birthdays are a marquee event for the Beckhams, as well as Brand Beckham (and really, can we even separate the two at this point?), so I was not totally surprised to see Victoria, David, Romeo, and Cruz all post about Brooklyn’s 27^th birthday.

Later in the day, a “source” told ET, “These are the exact type of performative, public actions that Brooklyn has been trying to put an end to, to no avail” and "Brooklyn and Nicola have been trying to stay away from this ongoing drama and focus on each other and building their own lives. They would love to move on from this."⁠

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OK… can you say you are staying away from drama when you literally kicked it up a million notches with your multiple Instagram stories about how awful your family is, including accusing your mom of being inappropriate? Stay away from drama? Baby, you are the drama!

Familial estrangement is complicated and lends itself to a lot of personal comments; some people point out this kind of public affection is typical of toxic parents who want to project a happy family and perfect image. Others have noted that Brooklyn clearly doesn’t want this, so why do it? If it’s because they are worried people will notice they didn’t post, well, that kind of proves a part of his point that his parents value perception over a genuine relationship. The flip side is that maybe this is the only way they feel they can reach him right now and they want to make it clear that the door is open.

This discourse is also riddled with talk about boundaries which, for this old crone, sounds a lot like TikTok therapy. Brooklyn’s boundaries are for HIM, not for him to impose on his parents. You can’t impose a boundary on another person. Demanding they not post about him when he posted several stories about them (and his brothers) is evading any part he had in this spiral.

Brooklyn and Nicola have a strong PR team and a robust legal team, they have had multiple opportunities to tell their side through sourced reporting and they continue to have their say, both online and through media outlets. He could have ignored the posts and instead, ET got a very specific statement.

Both sides are being a bit egomaniacal here; David and Victoria probably have a very good idea that he doesn’t want to be posted about, and the Entertainment Tonight comments continue to assume the worst of them (also, including Nicola in the statement was very heavy-handed for a couple of baby photos).

Clearly the two sides are very far apart. But you know what’s interesting, as a long-time observer of the Beckhams? Nicola and Brooklyn post in the same way as his family – lots of vacations, decadent meals, wine. There’s a lot of overlap in style, including branding (if you watch his birthday video, there’s Cloud9 wrapping paper. What hot sauce brand has their own wrapping paper?).

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So if Peltz-Beckhams want to talk about performative social media, sometimes the call is coming from the tragically tacky Florida mansion.

Attached - David supporting son Cruz at his Manchester tour date last night and Cruz and Jackie Apostel arriving in Paris today.