What David Beckham’s new Hugo Boss campaign says about women
He’s back in his pants for a Hugo Boss campaign. What does it tell us about what women want?
It’s 18 years since David Beckham first stripped off for Emporio Armani, and 14 since his billboard ad for H&M’s Bodywear range was plastered the, ahem, length of a New York skyscraper. Now DB7 (who turns 50 this May) is back in his smalls for a new Hugo Boss campaign, which proves, 30 years after scoring his first Premier League goal, that no one can pack ‘em like Beckham. Still.
There are more tattoos this time round, perhaps a few more fine lines too, but no matter: the creases that count are still present — all six of them along that washboard stomach, plus another two at hip-height for which there is a name so crude it is unrepeatable in the paper of record.
The Hugo Boss marketing team know exactly what they are doing here. Despite his controversial acceptance of a reported £150 million Qatari ambassador role during the 2022 World Cup; despite HMRC’s concerns over a tax-avoidance scheme in 2014 and the leaked emails in 2017 in which he called the honours committee “a bunch of c***s”; despite even the alleged affair with his former PA Rebecca Loos way back in 2003 and being sent off in 1998 for kicking that Argentinian, David Beckham remains catnip to the demographic who shop for men’s pants: midlife women and the gay community.
“The world will forgive him anything,” says Vicki Maguire, chief creative officer at the advertising agency Havas. “[That’s why] Becks is the most sponsored in the business.”
Here he is slumped in an armchair in the sort of position that, were you married to him, might easily breed contempt, but in this context seems like an invitation. Now he’s having a shower; what’s that, David - you’ve left your white T-shirt on? Better peel it off then, and don’t forget to maintain intense and brooding eye contact as you do.
Last year the Beckhams were estimated to be worth £455 million. Having sold us everything from razors to watches to Pepsi over the past two decades, they are now selling us a fantasy.
Anybody who remembers Posh and Becks singing Islands in the Stream together during family karaoke in the 2023 Netflix doc now has enough material to storyboard their own private rom-com, scenes of which — perhaps also weaving in how lovingly he cleans his lavish outdoor kitchen, just a suggestion — can be strung together should intimate moments require any, er, lubrication. Just lie back and think of England(’s performance in the Korea and Japan World Cup 2002, when Becks debuted a haircut that would become known as the “Hoxton fin").
Disclaimer: David Beckham actually doesn’t do it for me, but informal polling reveals he still tops many couple’s “all bets off” agreements. When I ask my sisters whether they have seen the new pictures yet, our WhatsApp group goes very quiet for a while.
Feeling objectified, fellas? Don’t: we’re not looking at the rest of you this way. Unlike the male gaze, which seems to rove so constantly and indiscriminately that proof of it pops up, say, while filming a TV cookery show or at a ballroom dancing event that children are watching, the female variety is highly specific and finely tuned, not to mention hugely lucrative for those who - to borrow a phrase - “would get it”.
Beckham’s ability not just to command it but to bounce back more times than an England penalty is a large part (snigger) of his commercial success. Burberry, Marks & Spencer, H&M - Becks’s appeal is wide-ranging and almost universal, managing somehow to tick both the “aspirational” and “everyman” box. Sure, he was mocked for wearing a sarong in 1998, but by 2014 a collaboration with the biker jacket brand Belstaff set the tone for how most men wanted to dress - not to mention how their wives and girlfriends wanted them to - for the next half-decade.
No matter either that Beckham is the same age as Demi Moore’s character Elisabeth in The Substance, whose star is fading as her youth does. Despite my 15-year-old niece asking who the man in his pants was when she saw the pictures, Beckham’s fans are maturing with him. He is the poster boy for a type of masculinity that seems to be on the wane: a sanitised bit of rough (every woman thinks the neck tats are a shame) but ultimately A Nice Boy. I have watched David Beckham reduce haughty fashion doyennes to mush by simply smiling and being polite - none of this Andrew Tate nonsense.
This is how the female gaze really works. David Beckham is hot but safe: an unintimidating Adonis who can do both rugged and clean-cut, just as he can pose in his knickers but also shake hands with old ladies in the queue to pay his respects to the Queen as she lay in state. A man you want to take home and come home to.
Victoria is in on it too - revenues from her fashion and beauty business rose by 44 per cent to £58.8 million in 2022, but the man she calls Goldenballs remains the gold goose in their house. She trailed the first image from the new Boss campaign - a close-up of her husband’s teak and rippling torso - on her Instagram a day before it went live to her 32.9 million followers.
“Love how Queen Vee posts thirst traps of David!” one of them commented. (A “thirst trap” is when users put up pictures intended to attract sexual attention.)
Another simply said: “Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.”
In fact the 50-year-old pop star turned designer regularly shares pictures of her husband in his gym kit or his undies with all the munificence of a UN aid drop. “Saturday morning workout with this fit guy, you’re welcome,” one reads.
Another, of David fixing the telly in only his pants (Calvin Kleins; sorry, Hugo) racked up more than 1.5 million likes in a few hours in 2023.
Last July, in celebration of their 25th wedding anniversary, she even got him back into their purple bridal outfits and seated once more on the matching imperial gilt thrones that - at the time - were skewered both for their naffness and their hubris. Now it seems endearingly self-mocking. Such is the couple’s celebrity status, they have their own pop culture mythology - the rest of us believe it belongs to us too, even though what we see is carefully managed and hyper-curated.
“Beckham isn’t an individual any more,” says the PR guru Mark Borkowski, author of The Fame Formula. “He’s a corporation in his own right, a money-making machine.”
He is thought to have earned about £650 million during his football career. He signed a lifetime link-up with Adidas in 2003 for £115 million, and was paid an annual £3 million by Gillette for several years. That first Armani campaign in 2007, which featured him and Victoria in their smalls next to a suggestively rumpled bed, netted them £20 million.
So that sweet, candid video of them dancing on the shore at new year? You can assume it was forensically checked and checked again before it was posted, in all likelihood by someone who wasn’t VB herself. Don’t let that spoil your fun, though.
