The rise of cosmetic dental treatment has boomed – which is great for dentistry. Still, with conventional beauty standards being fixated on teeth, it has affected people’s self-image and self-confidence and caused them to want to perfect their smiles, through fear they will be considered undesirable or unattractive.
Of course, everybody should do and feel comfortable with what makes them happy, and if that means getting cosmetic dental work because it will boost your self-esteem then so be it. Still, I can’t help but feel beauty trends often leave us feeling like we have to meet that standard and we can develop flaws that never originally bothered us in the first place, and even if they did, we can feel more pressure to ‘fix’ these flaws.
Growing up, I never really had a complex about my teeth; I was never bullied or teased in school for having gapped teeth; people admired it, and my friends used to ask if I could fit a pound coin through it, which I always found amusing!
I remember in my teenage years, my family told me it was time for braces so I could close the gap, and I decided not to, for fear, I would look horrendous and be bullied for being a ‘metal mouth’. This a decision I came to regret at a certain point in my life.
The medical term for gapped teeth is called ‘Diastemia’ and according to Healthline affects both adults and children. It goes on to explain that are many reasons that people may have a gap in the teeth and these can range from overgrown tissue that borders the gum line, to gum disease and habits such as thumb sucking.
The reason for my gapped teeth (as confirmed by my dentist) is due to a condition called hypodontia, whereby between 1 to 6 teeth can fail to develop, in my case, it was 2 – the lateral incisors on both sides of my mouth and this created gaps. According to the NHS around 3% to 5% of the population are born with it and it is hereditary.
Whilst I was never concerned about my smile growing up, I became more self-conscious about my teeth during the past decade, as I watched everybody become obsessed with their teeth and try to get the all-famous ‘Hollywood smile’.
Hollywood smiles are no longer just for the rich and famous (a good thing in my eyes). Places like Turkey and Dubai have enabled ‘normal folk’ with an average income to get the smile they desire simply because it is SO much cheaper compared to countries like the UK, where dental care is costly and often unaffordable to the person earning a standard living stage.
I watched some of my colleagues, friends, and people all over social media fly abroad to get their perfect smiles and I began to feel like my smile wasn’t acceptable and needed to be ‘fixed’.
I also remember years back, seeing a post on social media, it was a beauty brand advertising a product, and the model they were using had gapped teeth. The comments about her smile were brutal, to say the least. She was being tormented and made fun of and everyone seemed to have piled on with the name-calling.
Of course, this didn’t do wonders for my self-esteem and I was given the impression that people with gapped teeth are not beautiful and must fix their smiles because gapped teeth are not acceptable or fit society’s standards of beauty! Even my dentist told me I should have had braces when I was younger, and had he been my dentist during my childhood he ‘could have fixed it’.
Having ‘confirmation’ from a dentist that my smile should be fixed only added to the notion that something was wrong with me, and I needed to put it ‘right’.
This led to me becoming very conscious about my smile, and developing a complex. I went through stages of wanting to ‘fix’ my smile, and have booked several consultations at dentists, to only cancel them or not show up.
I even thought about getting veneers in Turkey, but the thought of being branded ‘turkey teeth’ has put me off, not to mention some of the horror stories I have seen online about the procedure going wrong! Online, I seen a man’s teeth snap in half after getting them done abroad on social media. It put me off completely!
I can’t afford to get my smile fixed in the UK (don’t get me started on dental care in the UK) and I am far too frightened to go abroad, and part of me is sticking two fingers up to society and saying I’m not going to ‘fix’ myself because everyone else is doing it!
Too frightened to go abroad and ‘fix’ my teeth and too broke to get them done in the UK, what choice am I left with? I could go through life hating my flaws and forever being conscious about them or I could learn to embrace them. I chose the latter.
I figured the only thing left to do was to try to learn to love my smile, which wouldn’t cost anything. If I learnt to be happy within myself, then nobody’s opinion about how I look would bother me and I wouldn’t feel pressured to ‘fix’ myself.
I stopped being critical of myself and started being kinder. I let go of imperfection and reminded myself that perfection was an illusion that could never be attained and what helped me most was the fact that they thought that EVERYONE had something they disliked about themselves, so I wasn’t on my own.
I learnt to understand that conventional beauty standards led us to believe that having gaps is unattractive, however, in some cultures, the gap is considered beautiful and a sign of fertility and good fortune.
In France even, gapped teeth are called ‘dents du Bonheur’ meaning ‘lucky/happiness teeth’, and celebrities like Rachel Lindsay and Uzo Aduba openly discussed the insecurities they used to feel about their smile and how they decided to embrace it instead of ‘fixing it’.
So, to all my gapped-tooth girlies who see their smile as a flaw, don’t feel pressured to meet society’s standards of beauty, and if you cannot learn to love your flaws, at minimum, learn to accept them. Nobody is perfect and everybody is flawed.
Beauty isn’t just about the way you look, it is also about how you feel and you don’t need a pair of fake teeth for validation that you are good enough!
