Why do all the Beckham girlfriends look like Victoria?

Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz Beckham’s girlfriends look like mini-me Victoria Beckhams. But it’s not healthy, says Charlotte Cripps, who has always dated men like her dad

At Cruz Beckham’s 21st birthday party at The MAINE in Mayfair, London, last weekend, one thing stood out – and it wasn’t Brooklyn’s absence.

As his parents, David and Victoria, posed against a red velvet curtain with their brood at the party, Cruz’s girlfriend, Jackie Apostel, 30, and Romeo’s partner, Kim Turnbull, 24, looked like mini-me Victoria Beckhams. And when Victoria, 51, sister Harper, 14, and Apostel took to the stage during the lavish evening to give a moving birthday speech, Victoria and Apostel looked uncannily like twins.

And in every photo I look at of Nicola Peltz – Brooklyn’s 31-year-old wife – it’s clear he married his mother. She, too, is a Victoria Beckham lookalike.

When she posed with her mother-in-law in February 2024 at the premiere of her directorial debut, Lola, before she and Brooklyn cut all ties with his famous family, she was more than channeling Victoria by donning a white corset and low-slung trousers from her Victoria Beckham brand. They looked almost indistinguishable from each other – despite the age gap.

And the same year, Peltz was so desperate to emulate her mother-in-law that she stepped out hand-in-hand with husband Brooklyn, wearing the same black Dolce & Gabbana biker jacket with diagonal white and cerulean blue slashed stripes, memorably worn by Victoria back in 2001 to attend the Manchester United team parade, alongside a two-year-old Brooklyn. All of them copy her style – even her “iconic” Posh Spice looks.

The Beckhams posing at Cruz’s 21st birthday party last week along with Cruz and Romeo’s girlfriends, Jackie Apostel and Kim Turnbull (Victoria Beckham/Instagram)

By just scrolling through their Instagram feeds, you can overdose on the lookalike photos of the Beckham girlfriends. They are clones of Victoria, with their dark hair, snatched-like appearances, and natural makeup look with signature pouts.

It's no coincidence, however, that the boys have chosen these women, just as I did when choosing men like my dad.

For the Beckham’s, it’s likely tied in with “Brand Beckham”, which, according to Brooklyn, is all the Beckham family cares about with performative social media posts. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, however, and dating similar-looking women is a safe way to “belong” and keep in Victoria’s good books.

Of course, people often date individuals who look like their parents because it is familiar and comforting – and it feels safe. This subconscious drive, often stemming from childhood, makes similar personality traits, emotional patterns, or even physical appearances feel like a magnetic pull.

The belief that a boy’s first love is his mum – or a girl’s is her dad – rings true. And choosing a partner who looks like your parent speaks volumes about that parental bond – good or bad. In the Beckham’s cases, their partners have to be comfortable with seeing life as if it’s a runway – so they need to look polished – or they would be outcasts. And having a unified look strengthens the brand – even if they don’t actively seek it. But it runs far deeper.

It took me years of therapy and rehab to understand why I chose partners that were the mirror image of my dad. I’d always gone for men who not only looked like my dad – dark, handsome with brown eyes – but who had my dad’s personality traits: charismatic, prone to addiction, funny, and workaholic.

Partly, for me, it was about buying into my parents’ great love story – the “love at first sight” scenario I grew up hearing about – and I wanted the same happy ending.

But it wasn’t until later, in my early twenties, that I realised it was a cycle that needed breaking – and healing from. It was about my constant need to gain my dad’s approval and love.

I’d pick men, who like my dad, loved me, but were also often emotionally unavailable – and try to change them. I’d become needy and push them away, which strengthened my belief that I was not lovable.

I was the love child of my parents – and the youngest – and my dad felt guilty about breaking up his first marriage and leaving his three children. His sense of guilt meant he couldn’t fully give his love to me. He also threw himself into work – and left my mum to do the emotional caregiving. As a child, I didn’t understand this – and felt unloved – and internalised his emotional unavailability as if it was a marker of my self-worth. I went on to try to fix that issue with other men.

It’s a healthy psychological process when a young person separates their identity from their parents to establish autonomy – but one that took me years to deal with. Choosing romantic partners who are carbon copies of a parent makes it so much harder to get off the merry-go-round of family dysfunction.

The Beckhams are clearly in the midst of a messy family estrangement – but one thing remains strong: the Beckham men all have the same taste in women. The trouble is that having lookalike partners to a parent isn’t the way forward – as I discovered. It just shows how entrenched they are in a co-dependent family, where nobody really knows who they are outside of the family role-playing and pretence of a “perfect family”, and even if the girlfriends do, they can only survive by being moulded into Victoria’s being.