Ulrika Jonsson

I did not have an affectionate childhood, neither of my parents were expressive in that way.

I refuse to surrender my Swedish passport despite having lived in this country for 43 of my 54 years because it gives me a sense of belonging and is an expression of my origins.

We all like a good filter on Instagram, me included. I use basic ones from time to time but am quite willing for people to see me first thing in the morning, stripped of make-up and without the aid of a filter. I believe in balance.

I have always believed that giving children choice is a terrible idea. The more choice you give, the more they will run rings around you.

I would paint myself as a liberal parent. But I am also a strict disciplinarian. I insist on good behaviour and bloody good manners.

Of course, we cannot expect everything to be taught at school. So much of what makes a child - their hunger and ambition, the desire for attention and perfection - comes from home.

I have always been a practical gal. Algebra and I never got on but I could replace the oil in a Fiat Mirafiori from the age of nine. Lightbulbs and plugs were always changed with ease.

If you cut me in half, there would be kitsch and Waterloo running through my veins.

We are an island nation and yet, in the 43 years I have lived in England, I believe I've only heard two Public Service Announcements regarding drowning and the dangers of water.

Because while society will never want me to be content with my body, I want to try to embrace it. It carries the hallmarks of all my various lived experiences.

But my weight has fluctuated over the years - in part due to four pregnancies, which ravaged my body. I never felt content with my body shape, as the 'norm' was always unattainable.

My early childhood was notable by an absence of proper meals and highly processed food.

As a relentless romantic, the prospect of being a 'lonely heart' has always had shameful undertones of desperation and hopelessness, and it's society's way of making you feel a failure.

I really enjoyed my photoshoots. Did I feel objectified? No. I felt in control.

The burden of constantly evaluating their weight disproportionately affects women.

Many of the Premier League players I have come into contact with over the years had very little concept of how the real world worked because, all their lives, they had been convinced it revolved around them.

If kids aren't allowed to experience monotony and tedium, it's unlikely they will value the times they are entertained.

I think we may have overlooked men's negative feelings about their bodies because judgment of women has historically always been so much harsher.

Women have been programmed to criticise their own bodies because we should have the shape that society, and in particular men, want.

Norland nannies teach 'emotion coaching' which enables the child to talk through difficult emotions or events, and instructs them to find different ways of dealing with them.

I have been known to catastrophise some things when life's not going as I'd hoped or planned.

Plenty of successful women started either as an unrecognised grafter or as a bit of decoration to the side of the screen.

I have always been very low down on the list of priorities in the world of family and domesticity.

A couple of years into filming 'Gladiators', I became pregnant with my first child, and as someone who'd had maternity coursing through her veins since she was young, I threw myself head-first into all things motherhood.

Speaking from experience, being engaged at 22 is not advisable. What on earth do you know of the world? What experiences do you have of other people? What wisdom can you bring to the table?

I don't see the end of relationships as failures. Some of them are experiences. Sometimes things falter through no fault of your own.

A tag I am happy to bear is that of feminist. I was born in one of the most egalitarian countries in the world, where women bear as much weight as men.

I experienced marriage from an early age. I was 23 when I married for the first time.

As a product of divorced parents perhaps I should have been considerably more cynical, but for some reason I am a proponent of dedicating your life and love to someone else.

We need to change the narrative about divorce. Sometimes it is no one's fault and divorce can be accepted as a good thing - and yes, even something to be celebrated.

I'm not someone to avoid controversy in my personal life.

There are aspects of ageing I don't enjoy, my sagging face and my aching body, my memory lapses and my inability to grasp technical instructions as quickly as before.

As women, we are fully expected to surrender a huge part, or all, of ourselves to motherhood.

Women who become mothers are policed and regulated during pregnancy, forced to give up so much - work and ambition, often.

I have experienced a fairly wide range of motherhood. I've done it on my own a lot of the time, I've done it smug and married, I've done it with a chronically ill child, I've done it with other children around, I've done it young and I've done it old.

We all want to do the best by our children. I will try to ensure my children have something when I leave this green and pleasant land, but if I was a multimillionaire - and this may come as a shock to my kids - I wouldn't set them up for life.

To be quite frank, people shouldn't have to resort to going without heating, putting foil on the backs of their radiators, fleece on their windows or eating cold beans because they can't afford to use the microwave.

I never saw it as a pursuit of absolute perfection but rather that I would constantly criticise myself if there weren't certain standards - in the home, in the garden, with the children, with work. I rarely stopped and just let things be.

As a woman, I have always felt the need to hold things I do to impossibly high standards.

I was certainly no swan - with my horrendously protruding goofy teeth, bow legs and under-developed, clumsy, boyish, adolescent body. I was never cool, nor confident.

I'm no diva, so the idea of 'rough-ing it' in Scotland's Inner Hebrides posed no panic in my heart. I'm a Swede. We are nature people.

If an unfit person pushes themself for a quick fitness fix they could end up with a broken ankle, or I knew it could reignite my chronic back problem.

Once women reach a certain age we like to consign them to some dark corner of society where we don't have to bother with them again.

When your love life is in the hands of algorithms alone, you're heading down a one-way street. And sometimes that's a street sorely lacking in reality, substance or even genuine connection.

I cling on to making connections with people I can physically meet. And the disposability of faces on an app which urges you to swipe left or right in a split second creates its own issues with our ability to see past purely the visual.

Weird thing is, throughout my life I didn't realise it wasn't normal to have pain in your hips. Mine is chronic and I guess I've been living with it for most of my life.

There's no denying that being single means the world can assume there's something wrong with you - sees you as incompetent, a loser and a flop.

If you go on a reality show in the vain hope you might be viewed as something other than who people believe you are, you will come unstuck.

Coming from Sweden, I've always grown up with images of older women around me.

We need to embrace its existence and accept that with 42 per cent of marriages ending in divorce, and with us living longer, we are considerably more likely to find ourselves in multiple serious relationships.