Monday 22 September 2014

Plus North 2014; a belated catch up.

Much like the majority of the fat blogging community who attended I had every intention of writing up about my experience of Plus North 2014. However I found myself being admitted to hospital two days after my return from Leeds and the hospital didn't have wifi (I know, the horror of it all.).
I hurt my back, tearing a disc sack and causing a bulge in my L4 and L5. Nothing life threatening but serious enough to see me being there for nearly three weeks.

I was discharged Friday night and am now recooperating at home. As I am more or less confined to my bed, with short spurts of activity to see me to the bathroom and back to keep me from seizing up, I figured I had time to blog.

Plus North this year for me was a mixed bag. I had the benefit of knowing more people so I was able to hold my own better and felt more comfortable approaching people in conversation. I also had the added excitement of being selected to model for Curvissa and So Fabulous!

I didn't take ANY pictures over the weekend. There never seemed any time! So I've had to borrow a few.
Here is a snapshot from the So Fabulous catwalk.
image credit to bgpmagazine.co.uk
5th from the left.

No pictures but a video of the Curvissa catwalk taken from their Facebook


It was so wonderful to see so many rad fats all in one place and the only comments that were said were compliments. As I hinted at earlier the weekend was a mixed bag for me. On one hand I met some wonderful, confident, amazing fat people but couldn't help noticing that despite the promises of community there was a lot of snubbing going on, a lot of cliques that seemed impossible to navigate.
It seemed apparent that, with the exception of maybe one of two people, I ended up speaking to the same people I had met for the first time last year. I felt myself withdraw more from it, content to watch from the sidelines.
I did have the insane pleasure of meeting a mutal Tumblr follower from Scotland and we hit it off straight away! Luckily her friends were just as wonderful and with the terrible twosome of Lisa and Rachel in tow we all headed out for an insane amount of drinking and dancing on Saturday night. I felt a genuine sadness as I waved them a very tired goodbye.

So while I had some negatives, like the staff at the venue being incredibly rude and unhelpful, I feel blessed to have made some genuine friends.

I would like to make a note that while I feel there were some negatives to the event I am very grateful to the people who have worked so, so hard to make this happen year after year. I can't fathom the amount of time and effort put in and I am happy to be part of this fat community.