We’ve talked before about just how wildly queer-coded Gurinder Chadha’s 2002 indie film Bend It Like Beckham is (yes, yes, I know, Parminder Nagra’s protagonist ends up with a guy, and a hot guy at that, but let me believe in the dream of her and Keira Knightley!), and the footy-fab fashion speaks for itself. But now that the World Cup is in full swing and the WAGs are a-WAGgin’, it seems like high time to rewatch the iconic film.
Below, find quite literally every thought that crossed my mind while rewatching Bend It Like Beckham for (conservatively) the 40th time in my life:
- Aw, young David Beckham!
- Never forget that peak aughts Posh cameos in this film (or someone who’s supposed to be Posh, anyway)…but I’m getting ahead of myself.
- I forgot how stunningly beautiful Nagra is as Jess, even when she’s just in a hoodie and track pants.
- Man, I need to rewatch her seasons of ER.
- The lack of an Oscar for Shaheen Khan as Jess’s mom (or “mum,” rather)…sickening.
- ARCHIE PANJABI AS PINKY, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!
- I mean, I would also be this mad if someone threatened to wear baby pink to my “engagement do” when that was my planned color.
- These girls’ lack of respect for pickle achar is wild to me, since I just spent a pretty penny buying some at Spice District (f.k.a. India Sweets and Spices) in Los Angeles’s Atwater Village neighborhood.
- Juliet Stevenson, the woman that you are.
- That said, do all women have deeply triggering teen memories of bra shopping with their moms?
- Let a tomboy-ass bitch wear a sports bra! Damn!
- Not this fat-shaming from Pinky 🙁
- I’m such a sucker for a bemused but ultimately supportive father, and Jess’s dad Mohaan most definitely fits the bill.
- Oh, to be enjoying that tray of Punjabi passed apps.
- Love these randy aunties and their aughts-era cell phones!
- I really think I’d fit in with these mean, hot girlies who just want to watch cute boys play football better than I would with Jess or Knightley’s Jules, TBH.
- And I don’t necessarily admire that in myself!
- Come on, Jess, be a girls’ girl! Introduce the girlypops to the fellas!
- It does seem really satisfying to beat sexist boys at sports.
- Oh, Jules’s hair in this film, the sonnets I could write about you.
- Okay, as much as I’m team “let Jules and Jess lez out, you cowards,” I must admit that Coach Joe is fine as hell.
- With that said, I hate negging as flirting, even from Coach Joe.
- I do like the way he says “bar” in his Irish brogue, though.
- Another befuddled, loving dad of a tomboy 🙂
- “There is a reason why Sporty Spice is the only one of them without a fella.” LOL.
- Ah, the awkwardness of high school locker-room chat while everyone is changing. I remember it not-so-fondly.
- I forgot about Jess’s leg burn trauma!
- Jess and Joe metaphorically and literally comparing scars…I’m into it.
- Aw, I love Gay Tony (spoiler).
- Oh, the internalized colorism.
- I, personally, would love to learn how to cook “full Punjabi dinner” from Jess’s mum, but I guess I’m not a wildly talented athlete.
- “Anyone can cook aloo gobi, but who can bend a ball like Beckham?”
- I see the point Jess is making, but as someone who recently flopped hard making aloo gobi despite using Madhur Jaffrey’s excellent recipe, I have to respectfully disagree.
- Should I go to London when I’m in Scotland for Edinburgh Fringe in August?
- Nah. Too expensive.
- I love how gay everyone on this football team appears to be, despite their wanton talk of “sleeping around” with boys.
- Bisexuality exists, famously!
- I gotta start saying bye to my friends with “See you slags later!”
- “Don’t you want a boyfriend like everyone else?”
- Pinky, I love you and your good (if misguided) intentions for Jess.
- I love that Pinky isn’t allowed to have a fitted choli, while the issue with Jess’s seems to be that it’s too loose and doesn’t show off her “mosquito bites” to their full effect. You can’t win!
- Okay, fab use of “Independence Day” by Martina McBride.
- Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain mentioned!
- Jules’s mum describing her posters of “all these great, big butch women on the wall,” LOLOLOL. Happy Pride!
- God, the fact that Pinky’s wedding gets sabotaged by homophobia that isn’t even correctly clocked is so wild.
- Mohaan’s story about his time playing cricket in Nairobi and being turned away from clubhouses by racists in the UK…I’m crying!
- I’m kind of impressed by the fact that this film acknowledges Islamophobia in Sikh communities more than once.
- Joe rubbing Jess’s twisted ankle…hot.
- GERMANY MAKEOVER TIME!
- I know the point is the game the team plays in Germany, but come on, Jess’s club-girl transformation (and Joe’s horned-up reaction to it) is everything.
- As is Jules’s sparkly halter top, which left such a big impression of me that I wrote about it at length in my 2024 memoir.
- Jules, girl…I know you’re mad at Jess for kissing Joe, but now he knows you like him! Don’t give away the game!
- “Do you really want to be the one that everyone stares at every family do because you married the English bloke?” Bummer, but fair point, Pinky.
- This red-herring lesbian subplot with Juliet’s mum thinking she and Jess are having a lover’s quarrel feels very IYKYK.
- Not this stupid bitch calling Jess a racial slur on the field!
- “Jess, I’m Irish. Of course I’d understand what that feels like.”
- I mean, not entirely the same thing, but okay, Joe, LOL.
- I can’t believe Jess is willing to miss being scouted to support Pinky at her wedding, sob!
- Sisterhood above all, et cetera.
- GO OFF, MOHAAN! We love you and your open heart!
- Jules’s mum confroting Jess for being “Lebanese” (as an auntie mishears it) at her sister’s wedding…get a grip, diva.
- Going-to-America time!
- And the aforementioned Posh-and-Becks glimpse!
- It’s famously a sign of good luck to see any celebrity in the airport, let alone these two in 2002.
- I am crying again over Joe and Mohaan playing cricket.
