Short Resume:

You can call her Victoria or Mrs. Beckham. Better yet, you can call her Posh, because that's the nickname the media gave her back in the glory days, when she was still a part of the Spice Girls, and the only name that suits her best. She is a fashion icon, a designer, a model, a singer and songwriter, a celebrity and a mother to three children. And none of the above: Victoria Beckham is just being herself and that takes up most of her time.

Born in a relatively wealthy family, Victoria was never, while growing up, the kind of girl that she's today. Far from it, one might say. Always criticized and bullied by her peers, she was the ugly duckling of the school and she had the full package for the job, from acne to a shapely body and short legs. Because no one really wanted to hang out with her, she sought refuge in dancing and drama classes but there too she only met with people's disapproval.

Her big break came in the summer of 1993, when she answered an ad in a newspaper and auditioned for a girl band. For her innate fashion sense and her acceptable singing and dancing skills, she was picked as one of the five girls of Touch. The band will later be renamed Spice Girls. The rest is history, as they say.

After an ascension rarely seen before, the band began to dismember in 1998, when Geri let her friends know that she would no longer be touring and recording with them. The split inevitably came and, despite the fact that the remaining girls still tried to make it work with one member short, the curtain had already fallen on the glorious days of the Spice Girls. The band disintegrated completely a while later and, when the other girls tried to make it as solo artists, Victoria thought it would be wise to also go down the same path.

Useless to say, all her efforts were in vain: she was never acknowledged by critics as a singer on her own, a thought she finally came to terms with. When her music career came tumbling down, Victoria resigned herself to being, well... herself. And, we might add, she is doing a pretty good job at it! Mrs. Beckham is the most Googled British celebrity and her popularity is, now that she's planning a US move, increasing. At the same time, she has also launched herself into the fashion industry and, more recently, television. There can be only one word to characterize who Victoria is and what she does: Posh. So, you can call her that because she doesn't mind.

Biography:

Victoria Beckham's life is what one might call a fairy tale, featuring a rather talentless kid, physically unexceptional and easy to overlook in general, who had the luck to be in the right place at the right time and who, in time, became a superstar. Few people really care about what Posh is really like and even fewer give a damn about what she does to deserve to be so highly mediated. But that doesn't change the fact that she has come to be regarded as the epitome of all that's expensive and trendy, fashionable and of good taste. Seeing that today is Mrs. Beckham's birthday, I say this is more than the appropriate opportunity to try and find out what lies behind that glamorous and artificial surface.

While growing up, Victoria was all about learning new things, things that could help her overcome her shy, introvert nature and make up for the lack of friends. Her parents were rich enough (without literally rolling in money) as to afford owning two personal cars, one of which also happened to be a Rolls-Royce. The teenage Victoria, however, was very ashamed that her mom and dad had more money than the rest of her peers and she often asked her father to drive her to school in his work van because the Rolls was 'embarrassing' and attracted way too much attention. Come to think of it, drawing people's attention was the last thing on her mind back then (unlike today): she was rather fat and had very short legs. As if that wasn't enough, she also had acne and liked to go to dance and acting classes, which made her the easiest target in the entire school. In an interview dating from her Spice Girls era, Victoria admitted to being often beaten outside school, a thing that happened so often that she even had to ask one of the teachers to escort her out of the institution to keep the bullies at distance.

While in high school, the soon-to-be Posh enlisted in a pop band but it never took off and she remained the same isolated teenager, who preferred to hang out with her sister's friends for lack of other alternatives. However, all that was about to change really soon: in 1993, she answered an ad in the newspaper to audition for a girl band. Thus, she met Emma, Ginger and the two Melanies, with whom she moved into the same house, while preparing for their coming into the (business) world. While waiting for that to happen, the girls didn't exactly get to experience the celebrity lifestyle, since they all shared the same room and had only one meal a day, the rest of the expenses coming out of their own pockets. A couple of months after Touch was founded, the girls chose to look for another manager, in the person of Simon Fuller, who would name them the Spice Girls and turn them, in just a matter of a couple of months, into the biggest girl band that ever took the spotlight.

The Spice Girls' first single, 'Wannabe', was the hit that introduced them to the world and it was something like, 'Girls, meet the world, it's all yours for the taking. World, meet the girls you will talk about for years to come'. Many other singles followed, most of which went straight to number one both in the UK and internationally, albums, tours and sell-out concerts. By 1997, everyone had heard about the Girls and knew them by their onstage personas: there was 'Sporty' Mel C, 'Baby' Emma, 'Ginger' Geri, 'Scary' Mel B and, of course, 'Posh' Victoria. Despite all that, the first cracks were already beginning to show - among rumors of misunderstandings between the girls, they released their first and last movie, 'Spiceworld: The Movie' which, despite massive ticket sales was completely panned by critics as the biggest pile of crap ever to hit the big screen.

In 1998, Geri left the band, saying that she wanted to pursue a solo career, exactly when the five girls were beginning to somehow work through their problems. The four of them (the remaining ones, that is) recorded yet another album (which, comparatively to the previous one, bombed in all the charts) and then parted ways. For the entire world, that was the precise moment when Victoria Beckham's music career ended, notwithstanding the fact that she still recorded music as a solo artist. Her three albums (one of which was never officially released, only leaked on the Internet) all failed because of 'competition' from other artists like Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Kylie Minogue. But the truth is that the public did not want to hear Victoria sing and the fact that she created so much controversy and negative publicity around her music certainly didn't help at all. While they say that 'third time's a charm', it was Posh's third album that made her realize that she didn't belong on the music scene... unless it was with the Spice Girls, she said.

On a more personal level, all was swell for the pop star whose music no one wanted to buy or listen. In 1997, she met soccer superstar David Beckham whom she married two years later. The ceremony took place far from the prying eyes of the media and estimates say it cost more than £500,000 and over 400 staff to carry through. While the power couple gave the exclusive rights of the wedding photos to a celebrity magazine from the US, the pictures were leaked on the Internet prior to their publication and soon became a great source of ridicule for the simple fact that they showed David and Victoria sitting on golden thrones.

Being the wife of the man who was considered the sexiest hunk of all times and a former member of the Spice Girls opened many doors for Victoria: her now-slimmed body made her just the person to endorse fashion products and from that to designing her own line was just one step. Victoria's transformation was rapid yet subtle: in almost a blink of an eye, she went from the model everyone saw on the posters and in the ads for the products she was endorsing, to being a name, a brand. 'VB' became the initials of a financial empire in the making, which also included sunglasses, the now famous skinny jeans, cosmetics, men and children's clothing, two books, fragrances and a documentary of sorts.

Lately, Posh has made plans to do something else for a change so she took the opportunity presented to her hubby of moving to the US to land a deal for a reality show. You see, the one thing that always tormented and deprived her of sleep was the fact that Americans barely knew her name, not to mention her face or her body of work - a thing that is about to change really soon, she ensures us, once her TV show gets the go on primetime. So, in the following years, we are about to hear much more about Posh other than the fact that she's a bad role model for promoting the skinny-dead body figure and the use of natural furs.

People have been asking themselves for the past couple of years: what makes Victoria so special? What did she do to deserve to have a life so documented? Who is she? The answer lies in the fact that we're not looking in the right place for it: instead of focusing on who Posh is, we should look at who she tries to be. That's her secret: 'if you don't have it, fake it and people are going to love you for it', she once said. Consequently, Posh has none of the following, even if it does appear so to the world at large: a career, breasts, long hair, authorial skills, talent and personality. It's all an act and it is working because she knows how to play her cards and because she exemplifies the ideal of 'manufactured' pin-up doll. Love her or hate her (or love to hate her), Victoria Beckham is here to stay and so is her larger-than-life Posh public persona.

I can only imagine what you would have to say about Victoria, were you to be brutally honest. However, if some sort of politeness prevents you from making your thoughts heard, you could at least make them known by taking the vote below. So, is Posh IN or OUT? Is she a true celebrity who has every right to be so mediated as she is or simply a no-name that rose to fame because of her hubby, the wonders of modern plastic surgery and overexposure? Now, that's the one million dollar question!

Solo Albums:

* Victoria Beckham (2001)* Open Your Eyes (2004)

Albums with Spice Girls:

* Spice (1996)* Spiceworld (1997)* Forever (2000)* Greatest Hits (2007)