Colleen Smith

OK I give up. It’s officially impossible to be a parent in this country.

This week it’s been more of the usual “experts warn” and “surveys reveal” in the Press. First we discover that British children are the most unhappy in the world (right after Christmas as well. Downright ungrateful really).

And then we are told that our teenagers are going off the rails because they didn’t have enough space and freedom to learn from their own mistakes when they were small.

So basically we have spent a generation designing out all the risks, fears and dangers of childhood (road are safer, accidents in the home and play parks are way down) only for teenagers to become so miserable and bored that they are finding new ways to put their own lives at risk with guns, knives, drugs, extreme sports and risky sexual behaviour.

I suppose it makes a kind of evolutionary sense.

It’s not just our children who live a risk-free existence. Even adult explorers and adventurers these days remain tied to the proverbial apron strings, knowing they are only a mobile phone call away from rescue.

We all live a sat nav, tom tom, no getting lost, no broken bones, safety surface, seatbelt, security camera, safety helmet, wet wipe, sanitised existence.

Richard Hammond even managed to survive his 300 mph Top Gear rocket car crash, thanks to modern helmet technology that protected his brain, and to the helicopter that rushed him into lifesaving hospital treatment so quickly. And what does he do after his brush with death? Realise he’s lucky to be alive and find a safer job in broadcasting?

Well, not exactly. Last week his fellow presenters laughed as he crashed into alligator infested waters and then daubed pink gay slogans all over his pick-up truck in an attempt to get him killed by homophobic bible belt Americans. It almost worked. He and the camera crew ran for their lives while being pelted with stones. I’m not sure quite why, but it was very, very funny.

And should we suppose from this that Clarkson, May and Hammond had over-protective parents who didn’t let them out on the streets enough?

I do know that Jeremy Clarkson’s mother made a very good living as the inventor of those Paddington bear toys that used to sell for an exorbitant amount in the Seventies. Little Jeremy grew up in a house surrounded by packing cases full of teddy bears, little wellies and mini duffle coats.  And as if that wasn’t hard enough, I can imagine that being called Jeremy, with thick curly locks and a cuddly physique also gave him good reasons to learn a bit of witty survival technique repartee.

So back to my immediate problems of guilt-free child-rearing. It’s half-term this week.  What am I supposed to do? Push my five-year-old out on to the streets and tell him it’s time he started learning his lessons the hard way?

For a start, he would be on his own out there. It may be the school holidays, but there are no children’s voices ringing out from the streets and gardens around us. All the children for miles around seem to be safely wrapped up in cotton wool.

What is new and perhaps a little weird is that the more that medicine and child supervision, and road, car and playground safety improve, the more our anxiety seems to grow. The number of child murders has remained more or less constant for the past 30 years. So apart from greater anxiety, there is no other reason for us to restrict our children’s freedom. So why does it feel totally wrong to even suggest it?

Imagine transporting our children back in time to our own childhoods, it would make a better TV show than Life on Mars – the cop show where a modern policeman has a car crash and wakes up back in the 70s.

Would they love the freedom from constant parental supervision? Would it make them happy?

It’s no coincidence that in today’s over-cosseted world, The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn Iggulden’s is topping the children’s best-seller lists.

It seems that all children need a certain amount of controlled danger to thrive. When we were children we were careful never to let our parents know what we got up to all day. On the surface I was a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth convent schoolgirl, in straw hat and white gloves.

But secretly I got into all sorts of scrapes in search of adventure.

One winter in the early 70s my best friend Valerie and I discovered our own private playground right in the middle to Torquay. One Sunday morning (my parents thought I was at church) we climbed over iron railings and sneaked up on to the roof of the then disused Pavilion Theatre. This was before it was converted into an indoor ice-skating rink, and later a shopping arcade.

While we were playing on the roof we discovered a way to lever out a small side window panel, and climbed through on to a ledge high above the main staircase (carefully replacing the window behind us).

From then on we spent hours most Sundays exploring every inch of the dusty, scary old theatre, with its backstage lovey messages scrawled on the walls by the stars of yesteryear, signed photos and newspaper clippings all pasted up in the wings.

The adventures stopped abruptly one Sunday morning as we inched across the flat-roof on our bellies and looked up to see a crowd of people watching and pointing at us from the bedrooms of the Torbay Hotel opposite. We stood up and ran for it, convinced the police were on their way to arrest us for breaking and entering.

When I was even younger my eldest brother, his friend and I once climbed up scaffolding and over a wall into the enclosed grounds at the back of Torre Abbey mansion.

Those were growing up experiences on a par with scrumping for apples, or stealing daffodils from the park for Mother’s Day, which play experts now say our own children need to do more of if they are to grow into well-rounded adults.

ALL is not lost – I now weigh less than a supermodel.

Admittedly that supermodel is Tyra Banks, who at 33 is now retired, and she is currently being called Tyra Pork Chops after photos of her appeared on a website titled, “Tyra Banks is Fat.”

But I was confused by all the controversy because Tyra still looked totally gorgeous on America’s Next Top Model this week (yes, my television is tuned to wall-to-wall trash. It comes with having teenage daughters). None of the skinny young striplings fighting for the next top model title were a patch on Tyra’s luminous, full-bodied, bootylicious good looks.

So I went on-line to see this so-called fat picture. And there it was. Poor Tyra, snapped by an intrusive paparazzi as she emerged from the sea on holiday in Australia in her swimsuit. And yes, she looked more my shape than the stunning TV presenter I’d seen the night before – big bum, chunky thighs, rounded tum.

Had she ballooned since the show was filmed? Or had somebody maliciously added some digital pounds to the picture?

I typed “Tyra Banks” and “Fat” into Google and was shocked by what came up. One website alone had over 750,000 people logging in, mostly to write insults about Tyra’s new curvier figure.

By far the oddest response came from “supermodel agent Dino Mistello” who seems to be under the misapprehension that models should not eat at all. He is quoted as saying: “As soon as ugly rumours of eating start circulating about a supermodel like Tyra, people will turn against her, especially those in the supermodel community.”

Notice he doesn’t say over-eating, or eating problems…just eating! Mistello goes on: “She says it’s a fat suit, but people I know say she has been spotted eating animal crackers, which is food. They say she ate at least two giraffes and one seal. So sad.”

At least two giraffes! How could she?

I next found a video clip of Tyra on her American chat show. Now here she is, bravely wearing the same swimsuit, but looking noticeably smaller than in the infamous beach pic, raging against the media’s obsession with weight, and against all the mean and nasty insults being thrown at her.

In that one minute clip Tyra showed that the camera can lie. She breathed in. She lifted her arms above her head, stretched and twisted like a cat and did the whole model pose in her high heels, explaining: “Y’all are used to seeing me look like this. Nobody complains about this Tyra.”

But then she turned sideways, breathed out, relaxed her stomach, neck and shoulders and sank down into her hip joints. Slumping like the relaxed Tyra strolling out of the surf. The change was miraculous. Suddenly she was, a dumpy, ordinary girl with a pretty face and fabulous hair. Still not fat exactly, but her bottom half looked reassuringly more like my own reflection in the mirror.

Then she wiped away a tear as she railed against criticism of her fuller figure: “If I had lower self-esteem, I would probably be starving myself right now.
“To all of you who have something nasty to say about me or other women who are built like me, I have one thing to say to you,” she said, slapping her behind and shouting defiantly: “Kiss my fat ass.”

Tyra is 5ft 10in and weighs 11st 5lbs and is a British size 14 jeans size. Yes, she admits she’s gained two stone since she was a young lingerie model, but she looks just as gorgeous and surely that’s the point.

I would give anything for a figure like that. I may have the bum, but I don’t have Tyra’s big boobs and lovely long legs to go with it. Why aren’t we all admiring her as a model of perfection?

She said: “I get so much mail from young girls who say, ‘I look up to you, you’re not as skinny as everyone else, I think you’re beautiful.’ So when they say that my body is ‘ugly’ and ‘disgusting’ what does that make those girls feel like?”

“I still feel hot, but every day is different. It’s when I put on the jeans that used to fit a year ago and don’t fit now and give me the muffin top, that’s when I say, ‘Damn!’ I feel more comfortable when I’m lighter.”

And there we have every woman’s daily dilemma. Settle for a bit of muffin top, or worry about every bite we take.

This is not just about an American celebrity.

At work this week I have been writing about issues affecting local people… a new unit has just opened, one of a handful in the country, which will treat young women from South Devon with eating disorders; a new obesity strategy is being drawn up for Torbay, and the Go For It campaign has been launched in a desperate attempt to get our couch potato population out of our front doors and exercising at least three times a week.

None of it makes sense. We know more than ever before about nutrition, exercise and optimum health. Yet the more inundated we are by this knowledge,  the less willing we seem to be to follow good advice.

Personally speaking I have been just about sticking to my new year’s resolutions on more exercise. But as a single mum I was feeling guilty about not having time to get “proper” meals on the table every evening.

So I hit on a solution. Using my new cooker I can time the oven to come on an hour before we all pile back home from school and work. I did all the preparation the night before, set the timer and got home to the lovely welcoming smells of home-cooked food.

I loved it. Dinner time was more relaxed. But there was a big downside. The children ate their usual mini-sized portions, but I was hungrily finishing off platefuls of hearty stews, baked potatoes, risotto or casseroles every night.

The result? Let’s just say I’m glad the paparazzi don’t follow me around and stick pictures of me on the internet.