David Beckham is now wearing chanting beads – why do stars in LA buy into these crazy spiritual trends, asks Jackie Hunter
WHEN that fully reconstructed Essex man David Beckham – proud wearer of sarongs and his wife's tiny knickers – departed these shores in 2007 to go and kick balls in Los Angeles, he took pains to reassure apprehensive British fans that he would not 'g
o all Hollywood'.
We loyal fans took David at his word and imagined that no matter how deeply entrenched in La-La Land 'culture' he might become, he'd remain the same down-to-earth guy we'd known and loved since the day he married a Spice Girl, sat on a golden throne and sold the picture rights to OK! magazine.
But what's this? At the recent opening of Gordon Ramsay's new LA restaurant on Sunset Strip, Beckham was seen sporting the kind of accessory that sets alarm bells ringing in the minds of right-thinking types suspicious of the nutty influence Tinseltown can bring to bear on the gullible.
Strung round Goldenballs' tattooed wrist were not one but three 'healing' necklaces from Energy Muse, a trendy LA jewellery company that apparently flogs not mere bangles, rings and pendants, but rather 'wearable energies' made from semi-precious gemstones, beaded crosses and old Chinese coins, whose purpose, the company founders say, is to 'help you obtain that missing peace in life'.
Yes, it's the crystal craze of the hippy generation, buffed up and re-sold to us in a more fashion-friendly 2008 format. Followers believe that each crystal has a unique resonance that helps balance the body's chakras, or energy points, thereby bringing about the harmony we all long for when life is looking a little less than perfect.
Beckham is not the only celebrity currently buying into this trend, and you might argue that dangling crystals round your neck is a pretty harmless form of loopy indulgence compared to, say, smoking crystal meth. Although you might think he'd be a little cautious about following the lead of Courtney Love and Britney Spears, two not altogether serene Hollywood types who also wear Energy Muse beads.
Oh David, what's happened to you? You were once just a (very) simple boy with a God-given talent for scoring goals and now look at you. You've gone all … Hollywood.
That's the trouble with so many celebrities: they achieve success and all the privileges that go with it, yet sitting up there in the maximum-security LA mansion they're still not content. They perceive a certain emptiness in their life and go looking for something different with which to fill it.
British life coach Fiona Harrold, author of The 7 Rules of Success, says that what Beckham craves is a fix of the kind that money cannot purchase.
"When you've got it all, where do you go next? He can buy anything he wants, but clearly what he's looking for now is something to make him feel good.
"When anybody gets to the stage of having achieved great material success, they have the luxury of being free to explore loftier matters."
A good example of this is Madonna, who has defended her well-documented attachment to Kabbalah thus: "There might be people who are interested in it because they think it's trendy, but I can assure you that studying Kabbalah requires a lot of effort, a lot of reading, a lot of work." But not the kind of 'work' most of us have to fit into our day.
There's certainly no shortage of wacky and/or wily practitioners waiting to sign up discontented celebrities to their cause. From Christian Science in the 1950s and Transcendental Meditation, as taught to The Beatles by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 1960s, to Buddhism, Scientology (promoted by Beckham's couch-jumping best friend Tom Cruise) and extreme tree-hugging (see Leonardo Di Caprio for the Prius and the rainforests; Woody Harrelson for the veganism and the hemp shirts), no alternative faith, spiritual guru or marginal belief system is too weird or wacky to pull in a Hollywood star.
Yet there are other factors at play in Beckham's life that we must not discount, says Harrold: peer pressure and social influence. "When you start to move in certain circles you gradually merge with those people. When you're surrounded by people who say, do and wear certain things – as Beckham is in Hollywood – you simply absorb their behaviour without noticing you've changed. Monkey see, monkey do."
The full article contains 757 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
