How does Ulrika's new 'teenage' body make real women feel - envy or just despair?



Here I am, standing in my office surrounded by lots of scrunched-up sheets of newspaper.



I’ve just been looking at pictures of Ulrika Jonsson in her bikini, and the sight has made me so depressed I chucked the whole thing across the room.



Ulrika looks fantastic in those pictures, as well she might. She’s just spent £11,000 to have a post-pregnancy body overhaul. The money has given her back ‘the body I had when I was 16’, with a gorgeous flat stomach and perky breasts.



She looks fantastic and feels it, swearing that she has ‘waited 41 years to feel this good’.



Fantastic: Ulrika Johnson has got the body 'she had when she was 16' again



Good for you, Ulrika. In making yourself feel better, you’ve just helped make the rest of us feel a lot worse. You’ve just raised the bar, yet again, for standards of attractiveness

and acceptability of a woman’s body post-motherhood, or over 30.



And you know, we really needed someone to do that, because frankly the rest of us were just starting to get a bit slack on that front.



Sometimes, we have babies and decide not to think seriously about dieting for a couple of months. And even when we eventually get the weight off - all except that pesky last half stone that just won’t budge - we might only go to the gym a couple of times a week. I know. . . it’s disgusting.

And don’t get me started on ‘older’ women. You might not believe this, Ulrika, but there are some women over 40, just like you, who’ve really let things slide. They’ve tinted their hair and watched their weight - and thought they could just stop there!



Some of them are crazed enough to wish people would value their experience and intelligence, when we all know what they really need is a perfect set of abdominal muscles.



Thank goodness we have celebrities like Ulrika to show us how it should be

done, and to remind us where our real priorities lie. We look at her picture, and so do our husbands and boyfriends, and we’re all thinking the same thing: that is

how we should look.



That’s how a middle-aged mother of four can and should be. And if we don’t look like that, it’s because we don’t want it badly enough. We’re just not trying.

Top heavy: Ulrika hated her breasts



And how fair is that on our poor men? Naturally, they don’t want to have sex with a woman who possesses what another columnist on this newspaper calls a ‘porridgey stomach’.



And what about our children? Do we want them to be ashamed of us as we slouch along to the school gates, without the option to go braless?

Oh, all right, I know it’s not fair to blame Ulrika for this trend. She didn’t make the rules - and she’s just one in a long, long line of celebrity mothers who are sporting bodies and faces that deny their age. But there she is in that bikini, mocking the rest of us.



Celebrities are role models and incredibly powerful as influences on all women.



They can’t make their living from being photographed from every angle, interviewed on every aspect of their life and beamed down at us from posters, and then claim innocently to be ‘just doing what works for them’.

An ability to fork out half the minimum wage on breast augmentation might be good for an individual woman, but it is bad for women as a whole. It’s creating a culture in which we’re engaged in an all-out war with our bodies and the ageing process.

That’s a war no one can win, but rather than acknowledge that fact, we’re caught up in a miserable collective madness that means we’re driven to more and more extreme lengths to stay in the game.

So we’ve moved seamlessly from facials and cosmetic peels to lunchtime facelifts and whole body surgeries.

Meanwhile, those of us who can’t or won’t go that far feel inadequate about our ‘real world’ bodies.

What makes me angry isn’t the fact of cosmetic surgery - it’s only a symptom of the poisonous power of celebrity culture.

What began as a menu of options to help women feel better or more empowered has become an unbearable pressure in which we no longer have the choice not to engage.

We can no longer say, with conviction, where the line between ‘normal’ and ‘dangerous obsession’ ends.

What’s the difference, really, between dying your hair and liposuction? If we diet and work out, why not reach the bits that diet and exercise can’t with surgery?

In a world that’s become shaped by celebrity role models and the seductive power of ‘transformation’, we can no longer tell the difference.

It leaves all of us dissatisfied, and feeling anxious and inadequate, obsessing about our bodies and neglecting or undervaluing everything else in our lives. So, thanks for that Ulrika. Thanks a lot.

How has she done it?

She says her life has been transformed after spending £11,000 on reduction, lift and reshaping of her breasts. But as Ulrika strolled on the beach in Los Angeles this week, with her flat stomach and stretched belly button, it seemed her chest was not the only part of her body to have received surgical attention.



Yesterday, she said everything but her new breasts was down to running around after her four children. If so, the results are miraculous. JENNY STOCKS asked London plastic surgeon Mark Ho-Asjoe to assess every aspect of her remarkable new look...



Turning back the clock: Ulrika Jonsson shows off her post-surgery figure while on holiday in Los Angeles this week (left) and how she looked in 2003 (right)



MAKING IT LAST



Mark says: ‘It’s not obvious in this photograph, as she is not laughing or frowning, but past pictures suggest Ulrika might have had Botox. The tell-tale sign is when someone can’t wrinkle their forehead when they look up. The forehead can also get shiny as it isn’t used, as seen on Madonna. The treatment, which is usually administered around the eyes, forehead and nose area, stops the muscles from contracting. Many women this age use it to smooth out wrinkles.’

UNDERARMS

Mark says: ‘When you have large breasts, you always have some excess tissue under the arms called accessory breast tissue. Some people can get quite a bulge here despite being thin, but it can easily be removed at the same time as a mastoplexy (breast lift). Ulrika admits to having had work on this area, which probably happened at the same time as her breast surgery — you either remove it with liposuction or cut it out.’

TUMMY

Mark says: ‘Ulrika has an enviable washboard stomach, but this doesn’t quite fit with a woman who has had four children. I’ve had patients who have run marathons and are really fit, but they always still have loose skin on the stomach. Even Julia Roberts has a bit of wrinkled skin.

‘When you stretch the skin in your 20s, it will often return to normal, but when you repeatedly stretch it, it loses elasticity. So it’s certainly possible Ulrika’s had work on her stomach to look that good. She could have had liposuction with a mini abdominoplasty, otherwise known as a mini tummy tuck, or she might even have had a full one.

‘A full tummy tuck pulls the skin from the upper part of the stomach down over the lower stomach. It leaves a scar around the belly button, as it has to be repositioned. A mini tummy tuck doesn’t touch the belly button, as the skin is yanked down on either side around it. Not everyone is suitable for this procedure, but celebrities often like it, as it doesn’t leave a scar.

‘Ulrika could also have had her muscle repaired in her lower stomach. There are two muscles called the rectus abdominis in the lower middle part of the stomach. When women have children, the muscle spreads to accommodate the baby and often doesn’t come back together again, especially after multiple pregnancies. Surgery can repair this damage and close the gap between the muscles.’

BELLY BUTTON



Her body might be slightly twisted in the pictures, but there is no disguising the fact that Ulrika’s belly button seems to be slightly to the right of centre, and perhaps rather too high on her stomach.

Mark says: ‘During tummy-tuck surgery, a new hole is cut for the belly button, so it is down to the surgeon’s precision to position it correctly. With a full tummy tuck, the upper skin is pulled down and the lower skin is removed, so the surgeon has to cut a new hole for the belly button. It remains attached to the stomach wall, so when a hole is cut it pokes back through. If the hole isn’t positioned correctly, it can go off-centre.



The tell-tale sign of a tummy tuck is a scar around the belly button, but it’s not always apparent in pictures.’

FACE

Mark says: ‘She is on holiday, but Ulrika’s face looks very fresh for a woman of 41. In pictures from last year, her cheeks were sagging down, but now they’re tighter and appear much less lined. This might be because she has lost some weight,

but in my opinion, she’s had a surgical procedure done too, possibly IPL (intense pulsed light).



‘IPL is a needle-free treatment — it acts like a laser, but uses radio frequency on the face to leave the skin looking rejuvenated. The theory is that the heat which is generated by the laser results in a tightening of the dermis — the layer of skin just below the surface — and stimulates collagen production without damaging the skin.



‘Otherwise, she might have had a cosmetic filler injected into her cheeks to replenish the facial volume. As you get older, your cheeks start coming down, and fillers can help hold the skin up a bit better.’



BREASTS



Swelled up: Ulrika reached an I Cup



Ulrika had a 32AA chest as a teenager, but by her early 20s she had grown to a D cup. During her four pregnancies her breasts swelled, reaching an I cup. Earlier this year, she spent £11,000 on a reduction to a 32C, and got her breasts lifted at the same time, leaving her with what she’s happily described as ‘the breasts of a 16-year-old’.



Mark says: ‘A mastoplexy like this is quite common in women in their 40s who have finished with pregnancies. The breasts look more proportionate to her size now she is quite thin. But while they appeared plump and rounded for her first post-surgery photoshoot, they have now drooped (which is natural, after the swelling from the operation has gone down) and are much lower.



‘During the procedure, the plastic surgeon would have removed breast tissue and excess skin, possibly re-sited the nipple, moved breast tissue upwards and tightened the skin.



‘When you remove breast tissue and have an uplift, you should have quite round breasts. But after a couple of months, depending on the type of breast tissue, they can drop.



‘Surgery like Ulrika has had doesn’t work as well for women who have had multiple pregnancies.



As the glands in the breasts shrink with age, the breast tissue becomes less firm.



Even implants won’t help because they add more weight, and gravity is constantly

working on the breasts.’



HIPS/ LEGS



Mark says: ‘I believe Ulrika could have had some liposuction to the sides of her hips and thighs. Her hips are a boyish shape, with no bulging at the side.

When a woman wears a skirt just below the waist, there is usually some bulge at the top, however small.

‘This masculine shape is very hard to achieve through exercise. If it is solely down to working out, whoever her personal trainer is, I’m very impressed.

‘You can easily combine liposuction with a tummy tuck, and the procedure is very common on women of all ages, because excess fat around the hip joint is notoriously hard to shift.

‘While Ulrika’s look is quite androgynous, surgeons don’t have to take out all the fat during the procedure. It’s now called lipocontouring or liposculpture, a procedure where you can just ‘sculpt’ the sides of the hip by taking out smaller amounts of fat.’