Call me a prude, but I am not a very liberated person when it comes to nudity. I avoid shop changing rooms because of the gap in the curtain, and on a recent trip to Budapest I almost had a panic attack when I realised that the public baths I was visiting didn’t have individual changing stalls. I stripped under a towel and it wasn’t graceful.

I just about feel comfortable wearing my birthday suit in front of my boyfriend, but on a bad day I’ll attempt to cover up in an XXL jumper that could fit a family of five. My mum’s constant protestations that "we all have the same bits" have only served to make me more self-conscious by drawing attention to the issue. I am the type of person who used the "knicker trick" in the privacy of my own bedroom up until the age of 15... just incase someone walked in.

Why? Well, I’ve never had a naturally toned body; my boobs are a bit wonky, I think my arms look like sausages and my weight fluctuates a lot and with it, so does my self confidence. I’ve gone from being chubby to slender and back again more times than I can count – in part, due to changes in contraceptive methods – but even when I’ve been at my lightest, I’ve always felt uncomfortable with my own body.

I’ll admit part of my problem is that I’m what you might call "an emotional eater". If I’ve had a good day at work then I’ll go home and weep into a family-sized bowl of pasta; if I’ve had a bad day at work then I’ll reward myself with a family-sized bowl of pasta followed by a Dairy Milk family sized bar. I’m also not one for a diet; I don’t care for the 5:2 diet or the Kim Kardashian-endorsed Atkins. I just can’t make myself order a side salad while I watch everyone else around me dine on great big pieces of meat.

Recently, after hearing a few people mention that they had been to life drawing classes, it felt like a sign from the gods that I should go too, so I enlisted a friend to join me at a £10 drop-in class at the Waterloo Vaults. While I had barely sketched since taking my GCSE in art more years ago than I care to count, I felt cocksure that I would come out of the class hailed as the new Rembrandt. But when our female model came in wearing little else but a short robe, I was slightly taken aback.

It’s become a bit of a cliché of late that the only naked women we see are those in magazines, films and porn, but as the model took off her robe and I picked up my charcoal, I realised that I’d not seen another female body that wasn’t mine, in the nude, right there in my face, in a really long time. While Lena Dunham has done a lot for the cause by proudly displaying her form in Girls, I can’t help but notice that Marnie, Jessa and Shoshanna have probably never experienced having back fat the way I have.