'My face is collapsing!' Ulrika Jonsson, 55, admits she 'avoids mirrors' over ageing fears

express.co.uk:

Ulrika Jonsson, 55, has opened up about her fears of growing older and that she doesn’t like to stare at herself in the mirror anymore.The former Gladiators star admitted she felt like her “face is collapsing” as she enters her mid-fifties.

Ulrika began by comparing herself to former First Lady Michelle Obama, 58, who has spoken candidly about struggling with her own body image.

The star praised the attorney and author as “brilliant and stunning” but confessed she felt it highlighted the struggle “the rest of us” face all the more. “But the fact is, as women, this is very much our lot,” she reflected. “We’ve been programm­ed to pick ourselves apart, to tell ourselves we’re not good enough or to find all the faults.”The Celebs Go Dating star went on to describe how she “avoids mirrors” due to her tendency to be self-critical.  “I admit, I do it daily,” she reflected. “I try to avoid mirrors for that very reason because I will look into them and pull everything about me apart.”Ulrika also confessed the process of ageing was “not as fun as she’d hoped” and that she was naive to think it might be “as gracious or forgiving” as she did in her 20s. “In my youth, I might have been displeased by the size of my snout but I always knew a bit of blusher on my cheek made the world a better place,” she penned. “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,” Ulrika wrote candidly in her latest column for The Sun.Ulrika also admitted that, while it felt encouraging to hear about “beautiful, intelligent woman like Michelle” going through the same struggles, it did not change the way she feels.