In Defense Of Crooked Teeth

Once as a preteen my sister asked the family orthodontist if something was going to hurt. He replied, “Have you seen all the dead bodies in the backyard?” So I knew never to ask him, when it was my turn, if anything was going to hurt.

I never did ask him. And it did hurt. Everything hurt. A lot. From pulling out my last baby teeth, to pulling in the last adult teeth with slow-acting lassos, to metal spacers, to a palatable expander, to the braces themselves. It hurt while eating, while brushing my teeth, and basically while breathing.

When my teeth started settling back in my late 20’s, and my retainer had been lost three apartments ago, a wise hippie friend told me, “You’re going to have an adult movie star smile now.” When I weighed my distaste of both industries, I decided against the one you had to pay for.

I spent that money on caramel apples, ribs, and bubble gum. I saved old pictures of Jewel to my phone. I started speaking in a Cockney accent to confuse strangers. It’s been a lot of fun.

There have been fewer headaches, and just as many jobs. I feel younger, like pre-braces younger. My old smiles started coming back. I had better diction. And yet I became a woman of the people.

Everybody felt prettier than me, and richer than me, so the treatment of me got better, by people like receptionists. I didn’t get hit on by any shallow guys anymore. All the nicest guys started coming my way. Maybe these guys were history buffs.

Most cultures embraced crooked teeth until about 30 years ago. It was just Americans who started getting braces in the 1930s. The cuteness of both a kid smile and a natural adult tooth smile is that every tooth gets its own energy from people looking at it. Your lips start to adjust around the public’s favorite teeth. As your teeth change every day, every day you have a unique smile overall as well.

Way back when, for me, I had metal braces around the fronts of my teeth, top and bottom. The same wise hippie friend taught me more recently that part of the pain of braces is that you can’t make every face you want to make. They said all of your faces work together to, in part, express your feelings. You need to relax your face sometimes fully, or twist it up into traditional Charlotte reactions from Sex And The City. You need to show surprise at your surprise party. You need to let it fall off when crying. You need it to drive, you need it to think, you need it to sleep. You need all of your faces to cancel out pain.

Yes, braces smiles are cute as well in a way. It’s that rite of passage feeling like when your kid is in a life cycle religious outfit. But after my friend told me these things, I can only see pain from their braces in their smile. The worst for me to sympathize with is after they get their braces off, and they still can’t make a natural smile anymore. It’s been conditioned around the braces. And if they get their old smiles back, the teeth will settle back. And if they wear their retainer to fight it, it’s a bigger headache.

This isn’t a puff piece. It’s not just about how to get nice guys to hit on you. Honestly, maybe it’s a call to action. When will we stop mangling our mouths into the same cheesy Pete Sampras smile? I’d say, at least give your kids an option in earnest. Maybe they’d like to be famous country singer/poets like Jewel. Or something else.