Once a month, after school, I used to walk across town to get my braces tightened by my dentist.
Dr. Cashion was a folksy man, as in, he didn’t wear gloves when he touched my teeth. I’d wait in the operating chair, listening to his assistant tell knock-knock jokes until Dr. Cashion shuffled my way. I’d inevitably bust out of there forty minutes late and speed-walk back to school, late to orchestra and suffering from my stretched jaw.
My reward for all that pain? A smile as symmetrical as college-ruled paper. Yet, I’ve been wondering lately, with the influx of crooked-teethed stars, whether it was all worth it.
“Straight teeth are bullshit,” said Keira Knightley. Amy Winehouse’s mouth looks like Stonehenge and Kirsten Dunst’s teeth aren’t exactly picture perfect. Of course, best of all is Chuck Bass’ crooked grin. It’s not like these people can’t afford perfection but rather they’re saying, “I threw my retainer in the trash and you’re going to like me regardless.”
The problem with braces isn’t that they’re one more symbol of unnatural beauty, not that they cost thousands of dollars and not that once removed the changed teeth often return to their natural state, but that braces are also, when forced on children, unethical. They make kids’ gums ache for years and cut up their cheeks. “It’s like forced plastic surgery for children,” says my straight-toothed friend Josh - without anaesthesia, of course.
“I was totally obsessed with my two front teeth being straight from ages 12-19,” says my friend Tamzin, who had braces twice. “Then the second time they went back to being crooked, I said, fuck it - it’s not meant to be.”
So embrace your crooked smiles, don’t force your kid to get braces and admit it, you want to make out with Chuck Bass, British teeth and all.
—GLENNA GOLDIS
posted by guest
Dec 15, 2008 3:39PM
honestly, a crooked smile on a guy is a huge turn on for me.