Ulrika Jonsson avoids mirrors because her ‘face is collapsing’

‘Women have been programm­ed to pick ourselves apart, to tell ourselves we’re not good enough’, former model said

Ulrika Jonsson has admitted that she sometimes avoids looking at herself in the mirror due to negative feelings about her appearance.

The former model and TV presenter opened up about how getting older “is not as fun as you hope. Or as gracious and forgiving as you think it will be when you’re in your twenties.”

The 55-year-old spoke out about her insecurities, saying that when she was younger, she might have been unhappy about the size of her nose, but that “a bit of blusher on my cheek made the world a better place”.

She continued: “Fast forward to my fifties and ‘putting my face on’ takes an hour. All I see is how my face is collapsing and diminishing – except for the hairs on my chinny, chin, chin. There’s plenty of them.”

Writing in The Sun, she lamented that such scrutiny and pressure to have a perfect body and face is “very much women’s lot”.

She said: “We’ve been programm­ed to pick ourselves apart, to tell ourselves we’re not good enough or to find all the faults.

“Because historically, culturally and societally, we’re never slim enough or fat enough or tall enough. We don’t have the right size boobs or cheekbones or luscious thick eyebrows.”

She revealed: “I admit, I do it daily, I try to avoid mirrors for that very reason because I will look into them and pull everything about me apart.”

The Shooting Stars presenter opened up about her own insecurities following recent comments made by former US First Lady Michelle Obama, who revealed that she “hates” her appearance, particularly her height.

In her second memoir, titled The Light We Carry, the 58-year-old writes candidly about how much she dislikes how she looks “all the time and no matter what”, recalling how she has had “plenty of mornings” where she turns on the bathroom light, only to see herself in the mirror and want “desperately… to flip it off again”.