Latest news with #UlrikaJonsson
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Ulrika Jonsson: My wrinkles shouldn't matter
Ulrika Jonsson has said her wrinkles should not matter after she was trolled for not wearing make-up. The 57-year-old hit back at 'vindictive and hurtful' online criticism of her appearance on a recent podcast and admitted that it made her feel 'awful'. The Swedish-born television personality said she was kind and intelligent and the state of her ageing skin 'should be of no consequence'. She received abuse after speaking on Matthew Spencer's Untapped podcast earlier this month, where she discussed her alcoholism and achieving more than a year of sobriety. Jonsson did not wear makeup for the interview, which was also being filmed, resulting in her social media being 'flooded with hurtful comments' about how she looked when it was released. Comments included being called a 'hag', that she had 'let herself go' or even 'gone to seed', while others told her to put make-up back on. Writing in the Sunday Times about the backlash she suffered, she said her heart 'started hurting' as a result of the 'nasty' messages she received while having such a 'vital' conversation. She wrote: 'I felt an uneasy sensation in my entire body. It made me feel awful.' Jonsson admitted that she had previously tried both Botox and filler but now she wants to 'look [her] age'. 'I've fought hard against the whole perception of women being solely about beauty and image,' she continued. 'I'm a practical woman and I come with a wealth of experience, kindness and intelligence. 'The fact that I now have wrinkles, lines and jowls should be of no consequence.' 'Getting older is a privilege' Jonsson said she suffered from eczema as a youngster, meaning the idea of wearing makeup as she got older was 'not a priority'. She credited Pamela Anderson, who is the same age as her, for being the driving force of a growing number of women who are going au naturel and leaving makeup altogether. 'I know what the alternative to ageing is and, with my newfound sobriety, serenity and inner peace, I don't want to go there right now,' Jonsson added. 'Getting older is a privilege, even though for some nasty, cruel individuals, that's conditional upon us girls keeping our make-up on and staying wrinkle-free.'
Metro
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Ulrika Jonsson says younger men ‘aren't bothered by ageing bits'
Ulrika Jonsson had the perfect NSFW response following 'nasty' ageism comments levied towards her. The TV host, 57, was videoed talking to Spencer Matthews on his podcast Untapped earlier this week, but on social media the clips sparked more conversation about her appearance than her words, as she discussed sobriety. She took to social media to call out the comment, assuring her followers she is 'not ashamed' by her appearance. Making it clear that she's ageing happily, Ulrika declared that she 'will never look like the fresh 21yr old [sic] that used to greet you first thing in the morning by the weather board'. Fans also threw their support behind her, further branding the cruel remarks about her skin 'sexist' and 'judgemental.' Now, in a new article for The Sunday Times – titled I'm smart and kind. My wrinkles shouldn't matter – the TV personality has doubled down on her clapback and explored the bizarre reaction many have to the concept of getting older. She said she felt 'disturbed' that the mocking comments 'didn't come as a surprise' and pointed out how disproportionately women face this backlash compared to men. 'Men have never had any such worries about trying to achieve equality or visibility — they, like fine wine, get better with age, don't you know?', the model wrote. 'For women, it's been an altogether different story. We have always been told to go quietly into the autumn of our lives.' She admitted to turning to Botox and fillers in the past, but now, in her fifties, she doesn't 'want to look 20.' Ulrika explained how her time working in television affected her body image, and that in recent years, she was inspired by the likes of Pamela Anderson, who has embraced a makeup-free look, often going bare-faced on red carpets. She then opened up about her dating life and how ageing has affected her relationships – or hasn't, to be exact. 'The vast majority of men I've dated in the past few years have all been in their late twenties or early thirties,' the Gladiators presenter began. 'They appear to love an older woman and not be too bothered about the ageing bits that come as part of the package.' Ulrika ended by saying: 'I know what the alternative to ageing is and, with my newfound sobriety, serenity and inner peace, I don't want to go there right now. 'Getting older is a privilege, even though for some nasty, cruel individuals, that's conditional upon us girls keeping our make-up on and staying wrinkle-free.' Ulrika's main reason for appearing on the aforementioned podcast in the first place was to discuss her sobriety, having celebrated the one-year milestone in June. More Trending 'I believe that I will never drink again,' she told the former Made in Chelsea star. 'I'm tapping into the person that was always there that I didn't think was there when I was drinking. 'I thought I was s**t. My opinion of myself was never very high,' she said. 'My mindset, my approach has just completely changed, and at nearly 58, I didn't think that would be possible. I thought I wasn't very good at life, I wasn't cut out for it, and I was just a pretty average to rubbish person.' Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Influencer Emilie Kiser's husband dodges criminal charges after toddler son's drowning death MORE: Gwyneth Paltrow praised for 'savage' Astronomer video after Coldplay kiss cam scandal MORE: Nicole Kidman could be next to flee Trump's US after applying for residency in Europe
Daily Mirror
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Ulrika Jonsson, 57, slams 'vindictive' trolls and 'nasty' comments on her appearance
Ulrika Jonsson has been forced to address 'vindictive' and 'nasty' comments made by online trolls after she appeared on a recent podcast to discuss her sobriety When Ulrika Jonsson was invited on a podcast to discuss her sobriety journey, the comments about her drinking habits from the past went viral. But her appearance soon became a major talking appoint among those who watched the recording of her being interviewed by former Made In Chelsea star, Spencer Matthews. Many were left concerned and shocked over her appearance as they felt she had drastically aged, while some took the opportunity to send the former presenter vile cruel comments. And so this prompted the mum of four to hit back in style in a bid to silence her trolls, who watched her on the Untapped Podcast. Writing in The Times, she defended her appearance. She said: "I've fought hard against the whole perception of women being solely about beauty and image. I'm a practical woman and I come with a wealth of experience, kindness and intelligence." Ulrika added: "The fact that I now have wrinkles, lines and jowls should be of no consequence. I know I look older. But then I should: I'm a menopausal mother of four whose body and face has lived quite the life." Ulrika claimed that she had decided to not wear make-up as she forgot her session with Spencer was being filmed. Despite not having had a holiday in seven years, she attributed her tanned appearance to spending a lot of time in the garden. This comes after the TV personality took to Instagram last week to silence the keyboard warriors who decided to post vile comments about her look. At the time, she posted a selfie and captioned the post saying: "I feel I need to address something. I don't get a lot of nasty comments - or if I do, I don't see them or send people love in response. But a couple of weeks ago I took part in a fab podcast @ to discuss my sobriety with the smart @spencermatthews." She added: "I wore no make-up. Partly because I kinda forgot that a project for the ears is nowadays also a feast for the eyes. But as someone who has had to wear heavy make-up on screen from 5am for years, I'm not a fan."] Ulrika continued: "Most crucially tho, since childhood I've suffered from eczema. On my body - the creases of my arms and legs - on my face - eyes and lips. Make-up has always been the enemy because it's been agony to wear. There were a lot of positive comments about the WORDS I said on the podcast. But a considerable amount about my tanned appearance." She went on to say: "AND how OLD I look. In a few weeks I will be 58. I will never look like the fresh 21yr old that used to greet you first thing in the morning by the weather board. I'm not ashamed to say that I am a sun worshipper and will no doubt pay the price for that. But UV lamps and salt baths, astringent solutions and creams were a feature of my life since I was a small child." She concluded her post adding: "I have uneven pigmentation doubtlessly not helped by ageing. I sometimes use filters in my pics because it's easier than foundation and less painful. I work tirelessly in my garden year round and often in the sun. I rarely sunbathe any more. Haven't had a sun bed for 6 months - which I do occasionally in winter months. Not ashamed." She also urged her trolls to listen to what is being said in a podcast rather than spending time to judge a woman as they "might learn something."
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
I spent four nights a week drinking until I blacked out – before snorting cocaine to sober up. I told myself it was OK... but this is how I finally ditched the booze: BRYONY GORDON
When I was making my first shaky, shame-filled steps to sobriety over a decade ago, I really wish there had been someone as brilliantly brave as Ulrika Jonsson out there, speaking openly about what it is like to be a mother with a drinking problem. Because listening to the TV presenter talk (pictured) about her decision to get sober, I was taken straight back to those awful last days of my drinking, when I looked at my lovely home and my gorgeous child and thought: 'What the hell is wrong with me? Why can't I stop drinking?'
Times
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Feel the burn: Ulrika Jonsson's tan has become a hot topic
It was when I saw on my daughter's Instagram feed a video that suggested changing the name of toasters to 'sunbeds for bread', in which young women admired golden slices of toast as an ideal facial aesthetic, that I knew something very strange had happened in the world of tanning. This isn't just a fad, it's a burning issue. Ulrika Jonsson, the TV presenter, has posted on her Instagram account to address unkind comments about her recent appearance. Jonsson was seen on YouTube with a deep tan, around Yorkshire Tea on the Trump tan tint colour swatch. To achieve this with her fair Scandinavian genotype she has to put in the hours. Not only does Jonsson use sunbeds in winter, she wrote, but she likes the sun on her skin in summer. 'I'm not ashamed to say that I am a sun worshipper,' Jonsson wrote. 'And will no doubt pay the price for that.' Jonsson, 57, was receiving flak for the ageing effect this has on her face. 'I understand that an over-tanned, imperfect and AGEING face offends you,' she wrote. But in terms of her joyful dedication to solar radiation, she was in fact ageing in reverse. Generation Z girls have ditched the safe fake tan of their mothers and joined an ancient and dangerous sun cult whose last-known practitioners died out in the 1980s, embalmed in Hawaiian Tropic. Ulrika Jonsson Sunbed use is on the rise, sunbathing is on the rise, melanomas are on the rise, the whole package holiday. If you need any convincing, ask a teenage or early twentysomething girl what the UV index is. I'll wait. My life had been utterly untroubled by the UV index. In fact I hadn't even noticed when it appeared on the weather forecast in the early 2000s. It was put there to warn the public of the days when the sun's rays were at their most carcinogenic. Now the British UV index is as old as the only people who obsess on it: young women. But in a development that is in some respects quite funny, they have weaponised it for evil. For Gen Z girls, the UV index is an unholy tool in which good is bad and bad is good. TikTok is now full of videos — some deadly serious, some satirical — about the need to intently track the UV index 'like it is the stock market and you are a day trader'. When the UV index reaches a ten, meaning there is a high risk of burning for white skin, the videos show girls cheering and running outdoors in their bikinis. Fake tan is deemed such an inferior substitute that girls apply it while wearing swimwear, carefully taping off the lines of their bikinis to make sure no one would guess they are doing anything the safe way. What does it mean? In the 1960s young people innocently sacrificed their health to big tobacco because smoking was cool. Same as in the 1980s, when I tanned to burn, rotating on my beach towel like a doner kebab. Yet now we know the risks, doing it anyway becomes more interesting. Sunburn is more carcinogenic the younger it hits. Skin cancer is now the third most common cancer among British women aged 15 to 44, according to Cancer Research UK. Melanoma is 2.6 times higher in women aged 20 to 24 than in men in the same age range. A long-term study on nurses published in Cancer Epidemiology in 2014 found that five bad sunburns between the age of 15 and 20 increased risk of melanoma by 80 per cent. Yet the UK's biggest tanning chain, the Tanning Shop, has increased its number of premises by almost 40 per cent since 2018. • The best self-tanners for summer 2025 — and how to apply them You don't need me to tell you all this. The evidence is clear and I'm not your mother. I am, however, a mother to a teenage girl. I am a regretful and reformed factor 50 zealot who creeps around in the shadows. Her friends, meanwhile, live in the light. I remind her that I am the wrinkled ghost — complete with a spooky white sunblock mask — of Christmas future. Her generation remind me of many things. Teenagers are designed to rebel: see the TikTok video of a teenage girl with a huge smile, captioned 'how it feels to tan when there's no rat in my ear telling me I'm going to get skin cancer' (to be clear, I'm the rat). Smoking remained cool for young people in the 1980s even when we had full knowledge of the risks. All the warnings targeted at young people missed the point. It wasn't cool despite the risks, it was cool because of the risks. Telling teens that smoking was dangerous was its best advert. And in a similar vein to big tobacco, we now have big sun: smoking's wizened brown lungs have been swapped out for wizened brown skin. Same for lectures from tan-phobic parents like me: they are all part of tanning's appeal. Tanning, like smoking before it, provides an addictive hit of youthful invincibility, like drugs or fast motorbikes. If you're neither going to die nor get old, why worry about wrinkles? Gen Z's tanning and ever-younger use of anti-ageing treatments such as Botox seems strangely contradictory. Yet in practice it is consistent. It's about looking good now. Those tanorexic elderly nudists with bits like beef jerky are of no relevance to them. • A 2022 study in the journal Genes asked nearly 4,000 white British 25-year-olds about tanning. More than half said they 'liked to tan', with 90 per cent saying their favourite way was outdoors in the sun. Their top three reasons were in descending order 'it makes you happier', 'it gives you more confidence' and 'it makes you look better in photos'. Looking 'thinner with a tan' came in at number five. Only a fifth said they had not had a painful sunburn lasting a day or more in the last two years. In the US mainstream politics is more into sunning itself. Donald Trump has so far remained silent on how he achieves his trademark skin tone. A White House official said in 2019 that it was the result of 'good genes'. But Unhinged, a memoir by the former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, claimed that Trump had a tanning bed in the White House. Robert F Kennedy Jr, America's mahogany health secretary, believes in tanning. He was photographed leaving a Washington DC tanning salon last month. His plan to 'Make America Healthy Again', released in May, is unusual in not mentioning sunburn, one of the major lifestyle factors causing the rise in young people's cancer. Instead, in October Kennedy tweeted that the US Food and Drug Administration's 'aggressive suppression' of 'sunshine' would end under his reign. I'm joking about big sun but, in a way, we do all live in the shadow of big sun — or rather, what feels like an ever hotter sun in our warming planet. 'I'm a solar panel,' one sunbathing young woman joked on social media. This generation of young people are perhaps unique in their gloominess about the long-term future. If measures to cool the planet aren't being taken, why bother taking measures to stop your skin burning? We may all burn one way or another. The Kennedy rhetoric here is appealing: maybe, hopefully, the scientists have it wrong about the dangers of the sun in every way. Or if they don't, if we are all going to fry, why not go down with a beautiful tan that will look great in the photos? 'My name is Christa and I admit it — I'm a lifelong tanorexic' By Christa D'Souza Christa D'Souza CHRISTA D'SOUZA/INSTAGRAM Poor Ulrika. Folks do like to have a go, don't they? It takes a tanorexic to know one and yes, as someone born in 1960, that is what I am. If you were a teen in the Seventies you probably were too. What exacerbated the addiction — because that is probably what it is — is that I was so terribly good at it. Being of mixed heritage (my dad was Indian) I can almost, as it were, get brown under fluorescent light. When I was a teen it was perfectly normal to want one's face to be the same shade of mahogany as one's body. (Hence putting tin foil up one's nostrils and facing the sun on a deckchair for hours.) It could be raining on holiday and I'd be out there by the pool wanting to be darker. You can never be too rich, too thin or too brown; that was the mantra of the Seventies and though I'm not saying I still hold by that, I'm also saying that I suppose it doesn't sound completely nuts. In one way I wish I'd listened to my mother, who told me summer after summer I was ruining my skin (she herself at 82 has peachy skin. In fact a friendly immigration officer in Pakistan once told her she thought I was the mother, rather than the other way round). But in another it's a price I've always been willing to pay. They say you choose your face or your body. Well, it's crystal clear to any observer which way I swing. Absent of a face transplant or some very, very, very expensive surgery I'm always going to look my age (65). Like Ulrika, I was always destined to be the peach kernel rather than the peach, for which I take full responsibility. My children, who both tend to dress like Shackleton on the beach, are always on at me about it. And I've got the whole season to toast slowly: we live part of the year in Greece, which means there's no rush. Soz, but I love the feeling of the sun on my face too much. And though I'll make some token efforts at the beginning of summer to cream up and wear a hat, ten days in I'll be out there bare-backed, just as I was in my teens and twenties. As for the damage I've wreaked over the years from other bad habits … Like I said, poor Ulrika — and she's only 57, miles younger than me! My advice to her is that she does as I do: keep teetotal, attempt to stay in shape and style it out.
