Veronica Lario, the ex-wife of Silvio Berlusconi, has hit out at a celebrity magazine that published paparazzi photos of her body and suggested she needed plastic surgery, branded it "ethically reprehensible".

The 57-year-old responded furiously to the gossip magazine Chi', which ran a spread of photos of the former actress alongside claims that she had put on weight. It also featured analysis from "experts" on how she could use plastic surgery to overcome the ageing process.

"I am almost 60 years old; probably, according to current obsessive standards, I am not ageing well," Lario told Italian newspaper Il Messaggero.

"I don't attend to my waistline or the wrinkles on my neck… Is that sufficient motive for suggesting that I – and, I assume, all my peers – go to a plastic surgeon?"

She added that the article was "an unacceptable attack" that was an affront to all women "who, like me, want to age without subjugating themselves to the 'young at all costs' stereotype".

Berlusconi ex-wife slams "unacceptable attack" on her body