Countryfile’s Julia Bradbury speaks out about body pressures after cancer scare
Julia Bradbury has said that it is her “duty” to embrace body positivity as she grows older after having a lockdown cancer scare which left her taking stock of her life
Video Loading
Click to play
Tap to play
The video will start in 8Cancel
Julia Bradbury has spoken about the pressures of embracing body positivity after suffering a cancer scare during lockdown.
The 50-year-old former Countryfile presenter has said that as she grows older, she no longer cares about rejection but she feels she has a “duty” to be positive about her looks.
Speaking to Hello! magazine that she is taking “stock” of her life, having just turned 50.
And she wants to set an example to other women as they grow older.
Julia said: “I have a bit of a duty to women to be proud and positive about the way I look now and wear it as a badge of honour, rather than think: ‘Oh God, my jowls are saggy and my tummy’s a bit wrinkly’. I am the age I am.”
The TV star continued to say: “As far as ageing is concerned, you look at yourself in the mirror and think: ‘Oh, OK, that’s never going to be the same again’.
“But then I think: ‘I’ve got three amazing children, and maybe this would have started going south if I’d had kids younger.”‘
Turning 50 is “a good moment” to “be grateful and think: ‘OK, what do you want from the next 30 or 40 years of your life?’,” she said.
“So I’m thinking: ‘Right, what have I got left? What do I want to achieve and how do I want to do it?’ And then I try to tick them off.”
Julia added: “I’ve got to that stage where I don’t care about rejection any more because you get so used to it in my business.
“There is stuff that doesn’t work out, and then there’s amazing stuff that does.”
Earlier this year, Bradbury tweeted a picture of herself having a mammogram during lockdown, urging her followers to check out anything they were concerned about with a GP.
She later tweeted she had been diagnosed with microcysts, adding “very slim chance of developing into anything”.
She told the magazine that she regretted leaving it several weeks after finding the lump in her breast to take an action, only doing so when a friend said she was having surgery for breast cancer.
“It jolted me. I thought: ‘You’re an idiot. Why haven’t you done anything about this?’,” Julia said.
“It was one of those things where I thought: ‘It won’t be me, I’ll give it some time and let it go away’. It was very remiss of me not to do anything.
“I felt complete and utter relief of course, and a little bit foolish that I’d left it, and it has made me very aware.”
*The full interview is in Hello! magazine, out now.
MirrorCeleb