I was thinking tonight about a recent opinion I heard (I think I heard it, anyway, but I might have read it) about teeth in the USA.
I think it might have been from a comedian, and he was contrasting Japan’s (or a country’s with a similar situation) teeth with those of the USA… in Japan, everyone’s teeth are different, and very noticeably so… in the USA for his first time, he noticed that everyone has the same teeth – orthodontia’s being standard has removed the individuality and the personality of people’s teeth here.
I had never thought of straight teeth being a means of stripping one of his individuality or personality.
Even now, though, months into digesting this idea, I find that I still want my teeth fixed up with orthodontia – I still want those straight pearly whites.
For me, I notice teeth in people… when they are bad teeth, it is difficult to see anything else… when they are good teeth, they kind of receive a mental check mark, and I move onward, seeing more of the person…
For me, clean and straight teeth allow for me to see more of a person… the crooked or stained teeth end up being a distraction.
Certainly, those shiny bright white teeth are also a distraction, because they are just so totally unnatural-looking… but that’s not the kind of teeth I’m aiming to see and have – those are a bit absurd (Think Ross Geller in that episode of “Friends” where he gets his teeth whitened, and they end up in a room with blacklights, making him extra freaky.).
Nonetheless, I still have that mental space reserved for preparing myself a way to have orthodontia and a tad of teeth whitening at some point in my life… I want my personality to show in other ways, not from the teeth I never would have picked, you know?
Yeah… something like that
Post-a-day 2018