^ Gear selection really becomes more of an issue on
both sides of the bell-curve......issues of comfort and concealment are not limited to those of us who are bigger around the mid-section or with higher BMI - those at the mirror-opposite end of the spectrum have similar issues, too. Women, while they are an increasingly focused-upon segment of the market, still today stand among the minority in terms of gear design considerations, and they often face unique issues, too.
There's a lot of fine-tuning that needs to happen, and often this over time not only as the shooter begins to better understand what works and does not work for him/her, but also as new gear comes into play (i.e. the development of the stand-alone or integral wedge, the utilization of concealment wings/claws, an understanding of "the keel principle" and unique setups such as the PHLster Enigma [and its much less well-known predecessor]), and as their own knowledge of gear and gear setup grows.
The article cited by
@Talyn (who seems to have a talent for bringing excellent pieces of knowledge to our Forum community!
) is a great primer, but as concealed carriers continue down the path, seeking additional knowledge and know-how from vetted sources like the Primary & Secondary Forums/FB Groups as well as YouTube pages like PHLster's (
PhillyEDC) will become important to their continued quest for both breadth of knowledge as well as depth of knowledge -
Demonstrating this advancement, remember above where I wrote that folks on either of the diminishing sides of the bell curve can have issues? There's also instances where their exceptional body-shapes can mate-up just-so with a piece of gear that also rides at the edges. One of the videos above shows the reasons why for many people, rigid "sidecar" type holsters don't work well, interestingly, for many who are of very slender and flat-belly'ed builds, these holsters can offer exceptional levels of concealment, and do not incur nearly as much of their design penalties as they empirically "should."