Arts & Culture
Gruesome toothsome
Published 17 April 2000
Design - Hugh Aldersey-Williams on the price of a smile
Another big Julia Roberts film opens this week, timed, no doubt, to coincide with the annual exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham of the British Dental Trade Association. Let us speak of teeth, and American teeth in particular - the body parts most liable to be shaped according to their owner's whim.
At one point in Jeremy Isaacs's television series, Cold War, we were led into the bunker built for United States congressmen in the event of a nuclear war. Among its enviable amenities was a dentist's surgery. This was presumably shown in order to provide a chilling hint of the likely duration of a stay underground, but it was more effective in demonstrating Americans' obsession with their teeth.
The American tradition of cosmetic dentistry was set in train by the early Hollywood smile. Teeth showed up grey in early black-and-white films - Errol Flynn's were famously filthy. In order to correct this, the all-powerful studios often insisted that their actors agreed to wear custom-made full sets of gleaming dentures. Only Bugs Bunny had perfect white incisors. The artificial smile had its birth along with the artificial means of realising it.
The American artist Laurie Anderson talks in one of her monologues of a man's smile of "big white teeth like luxury hotels on the Florida coastline". But our own Spike Milligan marches to the beat of a different drum in his poem, English Teeth: "English teeth, heroes' teeth!/Hear them click-a-clack!/Let's sing a song of praise to them - /Three cheers for the Brown, Grey and Black!" In the Old World, teeth are teeth, whatever their colour. In America, pace Julia Roberts, whose lips unzip like a sleeping bag, they are the building blocks of your smile. In Europe, teeth play no part in any charm offensive: the Mona Lisa makes a secret of her dentition, and even the Laughing Cavalier smirks through tight lips.
"Is your smile a powerful attribute?" reads one American dentist's advertisement. "Or perhaps does it hold you back in your business or personal life? We are pleased to tell you that the brilliant smile of your dreams can be a reality! Cosmetic Dentistry offers you a wonderful opportunity to choose the smile that is just right for you." The fusion of art and science is an important aspect of the pitch. This is aesthetic tinkering with a cloak of medical respectability. The underlying language is that of DIY: there is whitening, bonding and veneer, as well as the more elaborate structural engineering of crown and bridge work. There is nothing about your bite or health, except in respect of your "healthy smile" - which, these days, may be mocked up in advance for you by a computer graphic. Appearances are everything. It seems uniquely American. In grumpier nations, the cosmetic dentists must be the grumpiest of all.
Yet there is design here, not mere refurbishment. Dental preferences are said to vary from country to country. Americans want white, evenly sized teeth, neatly lined up; British dentists, mine tells me, aim for some "characterisation", a certain naturalistic unevenness, which is a way of saying that we are still rather half-hearted about the whole business.
But it is no surprise that we are slowly learning the American way of teeth. Despite their hardness, teeth are considered the second-most alterable feature of ourselves after hair. They are followed, according to sex, taste and daring, by breast implants, nose jobs, face lifts, penis enlargement and general redistribution of fat for a better figure. There is unimpeachable biological reason in this sequence. Hair is dead, the teeth partly so, seemingly more mineral than animal, hard-edged objects ready to be chiselled into perfection, a less shocking proposition than the remoulding of soft flesh.
It is not consumer demand that is forcing the pace, but bored dentists. In privatised healthcare, there is no living to be made out of everyday repairs and routine check-ups. Dentists need, in the newly appropriate jargon of retail marketing, to interest us in aspirational items rather than distress purchases like new fillings.
There exists now the bizarre potential for your teeth to improve as the rest of your body decays. Even the seven ages of man are thrown out of kilter. Death may be sans everything, but never any more sans teeth. The discrepancy may be temporary. Teeth are merely the first part of us to be widely acceptable for improvement. Cosmetic dentists may be the advance guard for the cosmetic surgeons. Our future bodies may follow our perfect smiles into existence like the reappearance of the Cheshire Cat.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by using the 'report this comment' facility or by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
