It’s not a mad preoccupation, but sometimes I imagine what it would feel like to dance with my kids at their weddings, should they choose to have them. Floor cleared, just us, arms around each other, swaying to maybe Powderfinger’s Sunsets (not that I’m taking over already).
A few minutes to feel my heart bursting. To run a fast mental montage of them in bassinets, prep uniforms, caravans, graduation gowns. To send them a psychic message that they better be appreciative, proactive, generous spouses who never say, “Water’s boiling, should I add the pasta?”
Which is why I found myself both sympathetic and quite cross reading Brooklyn Beckham’s burn-the-house-down Instagram diatribe this week.
Look, some of it landed with me. Growing up as a nepo baby as part of a “performative” family brand could be anxiety-inducing – all those hyper-styled photoshoots – and good on Brooklyn for doing something more head-turning than roasting a chook on TikTok.
But I hated how he weaponised his dance with his mother Victoria at his 2022 wedding. In Brooklyn’s words, Victoria “hijacked” a planned boogie with his bride Nicola Peltz and – this is somehow both funny and ick – danced “very inappropriately on me”.
At the time, not much was said about this mother-son moment, other than that they twirled to Marc Anthony. I pictured Brooklyn maybe dipping his mum, a nice sign to the 500 guests that he valued her for, I don’t know, pushing him out of her body and raising him to have manners and knowing not to overdo leather jackets. It did not have Lambada vibes.
Now, amid their famous but mysterious family feud, Brooklyn’s suggesting his mum’s a creep who “humiliated” him via dance. For clarity, this is the same fella who got a “mama’s boy” tatt on his chest in 2018.
How much would you give to see a video of the dance? Someone must have it. Let’s start a Go Fund Me. I mean, Victoria is no Ryan Gosling on the D-floor, so I can’t see how her “Wannabe” choreography could be offensive rather than fun.
What I can see is Lady Vic now, at home, nursing a hot lemon water and her humiliation. Not by the internet – she’s survived way worse – but by the claim that a moment she treasured was awful for her son.
That would hurt so much.
Just last week Psychology Today wrote weddings are one of the most emotionally charged transitions for parents because they formalise a shift you can feel but can’t quite articulate. You’re no longer central but not irrelevant either.
Industry surveys back that up, with about six in 10 parents reporting mixed emotions on their child’s wedding day. Joy braided tightly with pride, nostalgia and loss. All of that is why small, symbolic moments like dances and a shout-out in a speech really matter.
We understand this when it’s a father dancing with his daughter. The room goes quiet. People lose their shit. No one asks whose moment it really is.
With the Beckham dance, sure, there was probably an element of ego and showing off – I’m here with my boy, look, everyone – but it was also a public acknowledgement from a son that his mum’s invisible, relentless work mattered.
Victoria Beckham has been derided in every era of her life, from Spice Girl to WAG to standing by her man amid affair reports. I felt bored by her humourless rigidity on her Netflix show, but whatever – I respect that she’s built two headline careers from absolutely nothing and kept her family together for decades.
So if Victoria wanted to snuggle into her son’s neck on his big day, if she wanted him to hold her, lovely. She was making a new memory as her firstborn, her hothouse baby, moved from her orbit to husbanding.
Maybe one day Brooklyn will feel the thunderclap realisation of how hugely parents love their kids. Maybe he’ll appreciate that the dance he’s reframed as embarrassing was Victoria’s version of what I imagine for my kids.
A few minutes to say without speaking, “I got you here. We’re fabulous. Now go.”
Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.
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