On Saturday 16th May, I got myself up at the crack of dawn, shimmied into a beautiful Pin Up Girl Dress, and got myself on the 0830 train to London. Finally… It was Curvy Convention Day!

Curvy Convention was a plus size event held just around the corner from Marylebone Station and was running from 11am – 9pm. Featuring plus size companies, catwalks, and workshops, it was the perfect place for a Novice blogger to meet a few more people, have a catch up with people I knew, and to generally enjoy a plus size event.

I had, in my enthusiasm, booked myself on a Burlesque workshop for two hours! This was with the beautiful and Talented Fabia Cera, who took part in ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ in 2009. I was really looking forward to giving it all a try, and dutifully changed into leggings, t-shirt, heels and my steel boned corset. I was ready to shimmy myself silly.

As previously mentioned, I have thrown myself into so many challenges recently, and I felt this was no different to any other. I found myself surrounded by other plus size gorgeous ladies, as we learnt different moves, and used several props such as elbow length gloves, feather boas and stockings to great effect.

I loved every second of the first 90 minutes, and found myself giggling over the rubbish job that I was probably making of seductively rolling my stockings off. And then Fabia uttered the fatal words…

‘We will now split up into two groups, and spend around 20 minutes coming up with a routine, and then you will have a Dance Off’

BAM!!!!!

It felt like I had just run into an 8 foot wall at speed. Immediately I felt this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I felt a wave of panic flood over me.

Here I am, standing in a class of wonderful women, I have got myself on a train, travelled across London by tube, Walked around a Convention, had my picture taken by the press, completed 3/4 of a burlesque class, yet all of a sudden I have been floored by one single sentence.

It wasn’t so much what Fabia had said, But what I would have to do. All those fears, that I thought I had thrown out of the window, came back in a hurry. There was NO way I could get up in front of a group of people and put on a performance for them. I really had hit the limit of my comfort zone.

I am sorry to say that I couldn’t carry on. I spoke to Fabia and explained what my issues were, and she was amazing, very understanding and there was no problem in me sitting it out. So I, and a friend I who had joined me there, sat down and cheered like mental for the women who had the balls to get up there and do it.

Do I regret letting my confidence issues get the better of me? Hell yes! Of course I do. I did, and still do feel that I let myself down somewhat. I mean, after all, I was in a safe plus size friendly environment, with other plus size women.

But old habits die hard. Too many years of feeling that panic at having to get up in front of people, of making an idiot of myself, the fear of others laughing and ridiculing me, have clearly taken their toll.

I thought I was a lot further along in my journey to finding total confidence and happiness in myself, my size and my attitude. I now know I was wrong. It wasn’t that I thought myself invincible, but it was the first challenge that I had failed at since I started changing and improving myself and my attitude.

But every cloud has a silver lining. The realisation that there are still challenges out there that will faze me, made me realise that there are even bigger and better challenges still to come.

The next one very well may be StyleXL on July 18th and 19th where I will be walking the catwalk!

Wish me luck!!!