I´ve seen headgear a few times. All of them were tourists in Prague. Almost every person were children from ten to fourteen. But two of them were older. One about sixteen and the other about eighteen. One of my friend had headgear. I see it on the shelf but she didn´t want to put it on. She was 24 and she had large overbite.

My wife wore braces and hg for a while before we got married

Sparky

The first student in my class that got any kind of orthodontic treatment was a girl in 3rd grade that got a headgear. Too bad she wore it mostly after school and we didn't see each other apart from school.

Yes, I've seen it in the mirror, actually. Rarely wore it in public though, although it happened, which was not such a big case as HG was common where I went to primary and junior high (late 80s, early 90s) - during that period I believe I saw at least 20 other kids wearing HG at school, most of them much more frequent than me (I only wore it to catch up on hours prior to appointments at the orthodontist's and would never have worn it in public hadn't it been such a common sight).

Interesting fact, though, there were two orthodontists back where I am from, and you could see who were patients where as one (mine) used metal brackets on the lower jaw and clear on the upper, while the other one used clear ones on both. I never saw anyone else having my orthodontist wearing HG in public (except, of course, at the orthodontist's office). Don't know if he was old-fashioned, or what. It is true, though, that after I moved town I've never seen any kids with HG.

Headgear was normal 10-15 years ago.
Nowadays I hope to see highpull headgear, because there's mostly an activator included.

In Vienna a woman around thirty passed me by on a bridge wearing headgear. I noticed her already 200 meters ahead of me so I got lots of time to look at her. Wenn she passed me I had to turn around and see the neckstraps. I was fascinated and impressed of her self-consciousness. That was about ten years ago but I still remember very clearly ...

i see everyday a girl with headgear.
it´s the daughter from my girlfriend

shure, occasionally there are some kids wearing headgear in the streets,
but adults with headgear are really rare in germany,
I cannot renember having seen adults with headgear here.

Here in the Netherlands there are a lot of headgears,

My little sister had a headgear a half year ago, she wears it only at night, for about a half year.

And at my school there is a girl who wore almost every day a headgear to school

i was at summer camp one year.
there was a guy with a high pull headgear, i remember staring blatantly and not thinking about it. i really pitied him for having to wear it but i admired him as well. mixed feelings i suppose, lol

I see people with headgear quite often, but it´s quite normal in Holland.

only once, a young kid going to a clinic.
A friend told me that she had a "device attached to her neck" and told me her experience... and I had to disimule my interest.
And finaly, I saw a adolescent in the subway who had brackets, and some kind of "structure" to enlarge his maxilar, and was conected like, I don´t know, nails or something, the iron get into his cheeks, I suposed that that kind of device has to leave the skin with scars.

Was very common when I went to middle/high school. Although most did not have to wear it during the day, sometimes it would be done for a week or two for catch-up reasons. Had a few friends who had to wear it, it was fun to see it up close!

It used to be quite rare, but I would see one every 2-odd years or so.  But nothing the last couple of years.  The closest I’ve come to seeing headgear in public was, erm, myself, which I’ve done exactly once, after losing a bet.  The scariest experience of my adult life. 

I was at an orthodontist's yesterday for my consultation and a girl about 11-12 years old walked out of the treatment area wearing a facebow with high pull headgear. As soon as she walked out the door, she fumbled around with it, and she had it off by the time she reached the car

I have seen a handful of real life headgears, but none past the 90s, ever.

First one I ever saw was a high pull on a boy about my own age at an air show. I was fascinated, but didn't want to stare. This was in elementary school. Never saw him again.

Between elementary school and middle school, I went to summer school, and while there I saw a facemask! A girl I had known from scouting went to that school with me, so she was a casual acquaintance, and as soon as she saw me she came up and talked to me, and we were "school buddies" for the whole six week program. She had this headgear on her face like I'd never, ever seen before, white plastic strip across her forehead and chin and a bar across her lips with rubber bands going inside! It definitely changed her speech, but she wasn't difficult to understand. She was also completely unfazed by it, was her usual social self, had no trouble talking to people and talking in class, and never mentioned what it was or what it was for. She did not have fixed braces. I saw her again in the fall when she and I started attending the same middle school, but this headgear was nowhere to be found! I studied her teeth carefully when she spoke and saw there were square wire hooks along the sides of her top molars, and one morning I saw her getting off the bus and went to talk to her and saw there were still impressions on her forehead and chin from the plastic of the facemask, so obviously she was still wearing it at night.

That same year, I also started school with a boy who wore cervical headgear all day, every day, except at lunch when he'd take it out and leave it on the table. He wore it the entire three years of middle school, full time except for lunch, and the last year of school he had some kind of enormous plastic appliance attached to it (I know it was attached because he would take both out at lunch, still attached!) that made his speech really slurred. But he also did not wear fixed braces. I really, really wanted to make friends with him but he never seemed interested and I assumed I was not nerdy enough for him. We are good friends now (although we live in different cities) and he has since told me that that is not a thing. No guy, ever, would say "that girl is not nerdy enough for me." We were both just really young and socially inept, lol. Once we started high school he got fixed braces, then got them off, then got them on again. He got them off for good our senior year but started wearing some plastic removable thing again that was like an upper and lower retainer attached together or something. We hung out a few times in college and he was wearing that then too, and the headgear still at night!

In eighth grade I had this class mate who was really snotty and stuck up and very full of herself. She had this "perfect" pale blonde hair that she always pointed out was "natural" (we all had natural hair when we were that young, so I didn't really know what she was talking about) and was just... not very nice. Not to me and not to a lot of people. She was aways criticizing and making fun of things she saw on others, like... my shoes coming apart, or something. This was in the 90s and wearing "old" looking things was sort of the style, you know, grunge-looking stuff, but she was like little miss perfect. One day I passed her in the hall and she was wearing a high pull headgear, just like that boy I had seen so many years ago at the air show! Her hair was up in pigtails between the straps, and she was surrounded by her cadre of girlfriends who were loudly and continuously assuring her that it wasn't that bad, that no one was staring, and that her mom was so mean! It was all over the school by lunch time that this girl's mom had made her wear her headgear to school as punishment for something, and her mom even CAME to our school to make sure she was wearing it! (At the same time, the guy I mentioned above was still wearing his, and his removable appliance, every day like it was no big deal, so hers was not the only headgear anyone had ever seen or anything.) This punishment was apparently only for one day, though, because the next day it was gone and never to be seen again. She did not have fixed braces either, and she also got them on in high school.

The last headgear I ever saw was in '99. I was working in a drugstore and a girl and her mom came through my check out line. I had been in a play with the girl a few months before so I knew her really well, but she was several years younger than I was. She was wearing a cervical headgear that stuck way out from her face and she kept pulling at it and her mom kept pushing her hand away from it. I assumed she had just gotten it on and was told not to take it off for a bit, because I never saw her wearing it again. Her mom recognized me and made polite conversation while I rang her up but the girl just stared off in another direction. She didn't look embarrassed as much as dazed.

And that was it. Never saw a headgear in public after that.

Ever seen anyone in public with headgear/ yes, me! ;-D

Okay, seriously now:

I've seen a few in my life...  Same as everyone else: a short, unexpected "what the heck was that?" sighting.  I can remember maybe half a dozen instances. But one sighting many years ago stands out. 

I was about 15, 16, and had to wear headgear with my braces, which I never did.  I hated that bloody thing! 
I live in an in-land city, and a trip to the coast during the summer holidays is always a treat.  One year we were on this vacation, and my mum made sure I brought my headgear along - just in case she is in one of her foul moods and makes me wear it.  I really hoped that the holiday will put my mum in a relaxed mood, and that she will be so chilled that she would forget that her elder offspring is actually supposed to be geared up.   And it worked. 

One day on this holiday I was walking through the streets, enjoying the hot summer sun, shopping, eating ice cream, you know, all the stuff one does on a holiday.  And in this little seaside-resort town, on the sidewalk, was a girl about my age in full high-pull headgear, doing window-shopping with her mum.  They want into the shop and I followed, "spying" a bit.  She did not seem too worried about it, certainly less worried that I would have been, but you could still see there was a bit of "I'd rather not" in her eyes. 

Only later did it hit me like a ton of bricks:  if this girl is here in this resort town, wearing headgear, then the chances that I'd see her again in her headgear was rather good (the resort town is not very big). And if my chances are good... so is my mother's!  I hoped and prayed for the rest of that vacation that my mother, for the love of all things holy, do not see this girl in her headgear, because if she does, that's me screwed for the rest of the holiday! 

But neither I nor my mum saw her again, and I got away with a headgear-free holiday! 

I've seen headgear in real life on a few occasions...

About 10 years ago I saw a woman in her early 20s wearing combination headgear. She just happened to come in to the coffee shop where my girlfriend (now wife) was working on a Sunday morning. I was surprised because you don't see headgear here in the US all that often, especially on adults.

One of the girls in my neighborhood about 25 years ago had cervical headgear along with metal brackets and tongue crib.

Incidentally, I forgot that one of my wife's cousins actually had a reverse pull facemask -- the only one I've ever seen in real life (other than the one my wife wears on occasion for fun!).

yes

Hi,

I am 44 now.
I see my first headgear at school, I was 11, and a girl in my class had one for 6 mouth !
I had myself a headgear at 13yo, but only at home. (and a very few time in public, but not at school)
at 14yo, an other girl in my school have one.
I am in france, but some family in Holland. When I went there, I saw some... but less and less now.
In the last 8 years, I see 2 tourists with one. One in the metro, and one near the effel tower. (I have some pict of that...)

see you

i saw a girl wearing a headgear when i was about 8 to ten. The girl lived in the same town and took the same schoolbus and while driving home from school she wore it sometimes. I think it was quite ebarissing for her

headgear at home was very common in france in the 80's. (I had one, and my sister too, and some of my friend too)
It seems to be less common now, but very difficult to know... no one said it !

A handful of times...

First time i remember seeing one was in school. A girl in the grade above came in wearing a cervical headgear, and then proceeded to wear it many days at school. She was a cool girl, very popular, so at first it was shocking that she would wear it to school, by the 2nd or 3rd time, everyone got used to it. She was very confident wearing it - just pretended it was no big deal.

At summer camp when I was probably 10, one of my bunk mates had a reverse pull mask. He was very studious to never put it on until after the lights were out, but every morning he'd wake up with it on (and then quickly stash it). I think he was more embarrassed than he needed to be - many of the kids in the cabin had braces/retainers etc..

In high school I remember once seeing a younger girl (9th grade) wearing one (again, cervical) in study hall. She was clearly embarrassed to be seen wearing it when my class came into the study room and quickly removed it.

More recently, I saw a teenage girl in the Las Vegas airport wearing a high-pull headgear getting off a plane. I think this was still the only time I've seen a high-pull 'in the wild' so the memory definitely stuck with me.

When I had braces in 2012/2013, there was one time at the ortho office where a young boy was getting fitted for a headgear. I could only hear the discussion, but he was clearly not loving the idea, and his mother was trying to reassure him that it would only be at night etc etc. He walked out with a standard cervical headgear / boring blue strap.

Many times...

During the 1990s and early 2000s, it was not unusual at all to see kids wearing headgear in public where I live (SW Germany). In my school, a handful of kids used to wear headgear during the school day.

Sadly, they have almost completely disappeared from the streets nowadays, but it's still possible to see a headgear wearer on rare occassions.

As already stated here before, headgear is really common in The Netherlands. Up until a few years ago, it looked like it was a kind of “must” to start treatment with headgear (often in combination with an activator). Had the same combination myself, as well as a lot of my friends and family.

However, this seems to get less and less every year. Still, The Netherlands would be a good place to check out people with headgear 

The only time I saw someone wearing one was a  girl getting fitted for headgear in the chair next to me at the ortho but it was so long ago I can only vaguely remember it.

Yes, a few times on the continent. Memorable times are a trip to France when I was a child and a trip to Amsterdam when I was mid 20s.

40 years ago headgear was popular here. Now not seen much at all.