When I finally got a closer-to-properly-fitting bra, freshman year of college. I had known from middle school on that my bra bands were too big, but my mother kept telling me I was wrong, there weren't smaller bands that weren't training bras, and that I needed a bigger bra in a 34 band. They were all waaaay too loose and slid all the way up my back! I might as well have not been wearing a bra because I jiggled as much as without one. Thankfully I was small and perky enough back then that I didn't get the dreaded shoulder dents. I pretty much just got nipple coverage out of the bras I wore as a teenager, and a whole lot of uncomfortable, constant adjusting.

I went to a fancy lingerie store with a friend on spring break and bought a 32D after wearing 34B's and 34C's all through high school. I was probably really a 28E or 30DD as a teen. I wore that one bra to death that year and alternated with the ill-fitting ones until I could afford to buy another one. I wore a lot of sports bras that made me look squished and shapeless. Most of my bras after that were 32D or 32DD's because 32 was the smallest band I could find. A few years ago, I finally tried on some 30-inch bands and discovered they fit better, and that I am nowhere near a D (especially since gaining some weight).

I did realize they were big 'for my size' as a teenager, but everyone I knew told me I was only a B cup because if you held up my bras to say, a 36DD, they were smaller. Try as I might to explain that B cups were too small, people actually laughed at me for saying it like they thought I was trying to brag or inflate my size for vanity.

I had a small realization that I was busty when during on of my 4-5 days/week ballet classes, my teacher told me not to 'stick out' my chest so much. I was simply using the same posture I had been to dance for years. I quit around age 15, just before I started to really get busty. If I had continued, I would definitely had issues and had to wear some kind of dance bra. Ballet is not kind to the well-endowed ladies, so it's probably for the best I quit when I did without enduring more body shaming. I was already too short to be a professional dancer.