Victoria Beckham Reveals the Spice Girls Originally Had a Porn Name, Is Still "Very Close With All Those Girls"

Fashion designer also explains what real "girl power" is

By Zach Johnson Jun 04, 2015 2:30 PMTags
Victoria Beckham, Fern MallisInstagram

Victoria Beckham was feeling nostalgic Wednesday night.

The fashion designer sat down for a Q&A with Fern Mallis at New York City's 92nd St. Y, where she spoke candidly and fondly about her posh upbringing and the glory days of the Spice Girls.

"My parents were great parents," Beckham said. "They've been together for I can't remember how many years. They're very happy, and they still sit in front of the TV together and hold hands...Growing up, my mom was a stay-at-home mom and my dad was an engineer. He was self-made, and he worked so hard. He worked really hard, and it was always his ambition to own a Rolls Royce. He was so proud of that car, but when he used to take us to school in the Rolls, I was just mortified. My siblings and I used to beg him to drop us off down the street, or to use the big van he had for work. 'Please, Dad, can we just take the van?'"

"How times have changed! I would much rather ride in a Rolls Royce now!"

How did her childhood prepare her for pop superstardom?

"I was never going to be a model. I studied dance until I was qualified to be a dance teacher. My mom said I had to have something to fall back on if it all went wrong. So if it does go wrong, I can always be a tap-dancing teacher."

"Good to know, right?" she joked.

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Beckham found fame in the late '90s via the Spice Girls, alongside Mel BEmma BuntonMel CGeri Halliwell. "There were thousands of girls that turned up to audition for the group. There were queues around the studio. Everybody sang a pop song. I sang 'Mein Herr' from [the Broadway musical] Cabaret, which was really not the right thing to do, but it was very dramatic. In the beginning, we were going to be The Spicy Girls, but then we realized there was a porn site called the Spicy Girls. That wouldn't have been good!"

How did the girls earn their nicknames?

"Posh was given to us by a British teen magazine, but we were already acting like our names. Mel B really did dress scary, always in leopard print. Emma really was Baby; she always wore pigtails and those bloody awful platform shoes! But I'm still very close to all of those girls. I'm really proud of what I achieved with them. We were just five girls who weren't all that great individually, but together, we were pretty great!" she said. "That's real 'girl power': Be who you are, do what you like and be friends with other girls!"