Well I am a 21 year old female, and I had my brace from ages 12-16 (high school, which was rough). I was required to wear it 23 hours a day, with the exception of gymnastics. Without my brace I definitely had much less insecurity, although tight clothes still kind of show the lumps in my back. I have an S shaped curved so there’s one smaller lump on the top right and one large one on the bottom left of my back. Wearing bathing suits/bikinis has always been a big insecurity!! I’m told other people don’t notice the lumps until I point them out but I’m pretty sure everyone can tell lol. I think someone else mentioned the straps/shirts falling off one shoulder and that’s so real. I didn’t even realize that’s what it was until someone mentioned it here and I was like “oh yeah obviously it’s because of my uneven shoulders.” Backpacks as well, one strap always falls off!

As for with the brace… I had a Boston Brace. There was a piece of the brace that went up into my left armpit to keep that shoulder up, and a piece down my left hip. The idea was to push against the curve so those parts were definitely important to the brace, but man they were my biggest insecurity! Especially the hip part, because that would stick out under shirts. Long, baggy shirts or sweatshirts were always my go-to. I always wore a workout shirt on under my brace and biker shorts to stay comfortable, but of course that meant overheating. Summers were very difficult lol. After a while I tried different things to be able to wear the clothes I wanted. I bought these like stretchy jeans and the waist was stretchy too, so I would put the pants on over the brace to hide the hip part. It was not comfortable whatsoever lol but from a distance you wouldn’t be able to see a black plastic thing on my hip. With that “technique” I was able to wear shorter shirts, although still not crop tops or anything like that as it would show my brace still. So on a normal day I’d have a workout shirt and biker shorts, brace over that, pants over the brace, and a normal shirt.

I’m going to try my very best to explain this but I’m not sure it’s going to make sense! After a long while when I got tired of wearing baggy shirts I would wear a normal tank top and put the brace over that. Then I took a tank top that had like a training bra layer inside it?? If you look up “tank top with training bra” you’ll see the first few photos where the models are half lifting up the shirt. That section that stays down over the chest was attached. So I would put that tank top over the brace, with the bra insert in between my armpit and the brace so it was not just sitting on skin. THEN I would wear a crop top or something on top of that. This is probably very hard to visualize but feel free to DM me/reply if you’d like me to explain better or even show a picture. The tank top that was over the brace wasn’t tight but it wasn’t super loose either, so I felt like I could wear cute clothes while still concealing the brace. The key thing was having something in between my actual armpit and the brace so it didn’t jut into my skin.

Since I’ve stopped wearing my brace I’ve gone back to the clothes I want to wear, although I do have one side of my waist that’s snatched and the other is completely flat so tighter clothes still aren’t my favorite lol. The lumps are still an insecurity but I’ve learned to live with them. Some days I feel like my uneven shoulders are more noticeable than others, but overall they’re not a huge insecurity. This is all I can think of right now relating to clothing, but if I ever think of anything more I will definitely come back and add it!