Off the soccer field Becks is able to use clothes and accessories to draw attention to himself. And does he. The Versace suits, the sarong, and the sequined track suit that opened the Commonwealth Games dazzled TV audiences and confused some foreign viewers who still thought the queen of England was a middle-aged woman. Essentially, Beckham's visual style is "glam" -- more Suede than Oasis (with a bit of contemporary R&B pop promo thrown in). And like glam rock, which was a British working-class style running riot in the decade of his birth, the 1970s, Beckham, the son of Leytonstone proletarians, has a clear image of himself as working-class royalty, the new People's Princess (though his "superbrand" power has as yet been unable to sell us his wife, who, post-Spice Girls, remains unpopular and unsuccessful). Hence his wedding took place in a castle; at the reception afterward Posh and Becks were ensconced in matching His 'n' Hers thrones, and their Hertfordshire home was dubbed "Beckingham Palace" by the tabloids. Soccer, like pop music, is one of the few ways the British are permitted any success -- it is, after all, something both manual and aristocratic at the same time. Becks the football pop star represents and advertises a materialistic aspirationalism that doesn't appear bourgeois.

Beckham's tattoos -- a literal form of branding -- seem to epitomize this. What were once badges of male working-class identity are now ways of advertising the unique Becks brand. "Although it hurts to have them done, they're there forever and so are the feelings behind them," Becks has explained. But these are not the kind of "Mum & Dad Always" tattoos his plumber dad and his mates might have had. The huge, shaven-headed, open-armed, "guardian angel" with an alarmingly well-packed loincloth on his back looks more than a little like himself with a Jesus complex. Beneath, in gothic lettering, is his son's name: Brooklyn. Once his uniform comes off at the end of a match -- as it usually does, and before anyone else's -- the tattoos help him to stand out instantly, and mean that he is never naked: He's always wearing something designer.

Becks clearly enjoys getting his tits out for the lads and lasses -- and oiling them up for the cover of Esquire and other laddie mags. While he may look strangely undernourished and fragile in a soccer uniform, as if his ghoulishly skinny wife has been taking away his fries, and all those injuries suggest he's somewhat brittle, stripped down he looks as lithe and strong as a panther. He doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke, he doesn't do drugs. His body is a temple -- to his own self-image -- which he never ceases worshipping.

There is however a submissive photophilia to Becks. A certain passivity or even masochism about his displays for the camera, which seem to say "I'm here for you." Hence perhaps the fondness for those Christ-like/James Dean-like poses with arms outstretched (the cover of Esquire had him "crucified" on the Cross of St. George). Even those free kicks seem to have the loping iconography of "Giant" or Calvary about them. Of course, really Becks is there for him, but it's a nice thought nonetheless.

To some, of course, he is already a god -- literally. In addition to the Thai Becks Buddha, a pair of Indian artists have painted him as Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction. In the Far East, androgyny is seen as a feature of godhead -- and so it has here in the West as well since the Rolling Stones. As Becks tells us himself: "I'm not scared of my feminine side and I think quite a lot of the things I do come from that side of my character. People have pointed that out as if it's a criticism, but it doesn't bother me." It's as if when he was a teenager he looked at those grainy black-and-white '80s girlish bedroom shrine posters of smooth-skinned doe-ish male models holding babies and thought: I'd like to be like that when I grow up. Becks is the poster boy of what I have termed elsewhere metrosexuality. His hero/role-model status combined with his out-of-the-closet narcissism and love of shopping and fashion and apparent indifference to being thought of as "faggoty" means that for corporations he is a pricelessly potent vector for persuading millions, if not billions, of young men around the world to express themselves "fearlessly," to be "individuals" -- by wearing exactly what he wears. Beckham is the über-metrosexual, not just because he rams metrosexuality down the throats of those men churlish enough to remain retrosexual and refuse to pluck their eyebrows, but also because he is a sportsman, a man of substance -- a "real" man -- who wishes to disappear into surfaceness in order to become ubiquitous -- to become media. Becks is The One, and better looking than Keanu -- but, be warned, he's working for the Matrix.

Ultimately, though, it is his desire that makes him the superbrand that he is. Beckham has succeeded where previous British soccer heroes you've never heard of, such as George Best, Alan Shearer and Eric Cantona -- a Frenchman who played for Manchester United and is John the Baptist to Beck's Christ -- have failed, and has become a truly global star. Partly because the world has changed but mostly because they didn't want it as much as he did. Becks is transparently so much more needy -- more needy than almost any of us is. The public, quite rightly, only lets itself love completely those who clearly depend on that love, because they don't want to be rejected. Beckham's neediness is literally bottomless. Like his image, it grows with what it feeds on. He'll never reject our gaze.

It's there in his hungry face. He isn't actually that attractive. Blasphemy! No really, his face doesn't have a proper symmetry. His mouth is froglike and bashfully off-center. But what is attractive, or at least hypnotizing in a democratic kinda way, which is to say mediagenic, is his neurotic-but-ordinary desire to be beautiful, and to use all the technology and voodoo of consumer culture and fame to achieve this. His apparent lack of an inner life, his submissive, high-pitched 14-year-old-boy voice that no one listens to, his beguiling blankness, only emphasize his success, his powerfulness in a world of superficiality. That oddly flat-but-friendly gaze that peers out from billboards and behind Police sunglasses looks to millions like the nearest thing to godliness in a godless world. People fall in love not with him -- who knows what Beckham is really like, or cares -- but with his multimedia neediness, his transmitted "viral" desire, which seems to spread and replicate itself everywhere, endorsing multiple products. Becks' desire, via the giant shared toilet handle of advertising, infects us, inhabits us and becomes our own.

The British for their part, even those calling tabloid papers in tears to declare their lives ruined now that Beckham is moving to Real Madrid, will survive sharing him with the Spanish for a few years. After all, they're already proudly sharing him with most of the rest of the world -- and basking in his reflected, if somewhat synthetic glory. No one buys our pop music anymore; our "Britpop" prime minister, Tony Blair, post-Iraq, is widely regarded abroad as a scoundrel; our royals, post Diana, are a dreary bunch of sods (even her sainted son William is beginning to lose some of his Spencer spark and glow to the tired, horsey blood of his "German" dad and grandmama); and our national soccer squad has difficulty beating countries with a population smaller than Southampton. But "our Becks" on the other, perfectly manicured hand, is something British the world seems to actually want, badly.

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