White Teeth
Why having British teeth is asking for trouble in America
It’s only when you move from Britain to California that you begin to understand what a horrific disappointment your teeth are to everyone around you.
In The International League of Teeth, America is in pole position, with Brazil and a few of the Latin American countries tied close behind.
Britain is currently in the relegation zone.
I have what might be described in Britain as ‘normal teeth’ , by which I mean that no-one has forcibly knocked any of them out with a pool ball in a sock: I brush, I floss, I once had braces; the upper gnashers are relatively straight, but my lower teeth are arranged like a Friday afternoon high-speed pile-up on the 405.
Before I moved here, I had never really thought of my teeth as a disaster area, an affront to dentistry, or a drain on my disposable income.
However, here every time I go anywhere near a dental professional in the United States of America, they look into my mouth with the same mixture of chagrin and delight as a builder or plumber does when called in to fix a burst gas main, leaky boiler, or some other major issue that requires an immense amount of time & potloads of cash to fix.
The dentist will take a 30-second look into my mouth, and then, like a trauma-ward neurosurgeon doing triage in a hospital overloaded with wounded or dying patients, will bark out a series of procedures that must be performed straight away if I’m not to suffer a fate worse than death.
They then relieve me of huge amounts of money, some of my teeth, and a fair amount of my dignity.
Since I moved to America, I have had five wisdom teeth forcibly removed under local anaesthetic, three chunks cut out of my gum, several fillings, innumerable stitches, and have also been offered whitening, straightening, Invisalign, and sundry other fiddles, all of which are presented as essential procedures that need to happen RIGHT NOW if I am not to suffer a dental and orthodontic fate worse than death.
(After the wisdom tooth operation, I was forced to wear a cold-compress wrap-around head-dress best described as a “Fridgab” for a week, but at least they let me keep a couple of my teeth as a souvenir afterwards).
Coming from a lifetime of NHS dentistry, where they will only do what is necessary and nothing more, I have started to become suspicious that this is nothing more than dentistry as a method of extracting cash from patients as well as teeth.
I have grown tired of having to explain to dental professionals that I view having mildly overlapping lower teeth as ‘my thing’, a heraldic choice in a perfectionist city where everyone is either beautiful or pays to get as near as possible to it — appeals to the wonky grins of Kate Moss and Serge Gainsbourg as proof that asymmetrical teeth are cool have done me little good.
Now, going anywhere near a dental office makes me feel that Uncle Sam and the American Nation are exacting some terrible revenge on me for the litany of crimes committed by the British Empire hundreds of years before my birth.
It doesn’t help that Californian teeth are nothing short of spectacular— it’s a popular misconception that people wear shades in LA all the time because they’re hiding from the sun or paparazzi, but it’s actually to prevent snow blindness from UV reflected off everyone’s blindingly white teeth.
I have encountered people whose very grins are visible from space, and I’m sure before I go to bed at night that I can hear a chorus of squeaking as thousands of Angelenos go through the motions of brushing their shiny veneers within an inch of their lives.
I take some solace in the fact that, as I get older, I can migrate to a lovely set of perfect, white removable dentures that will only require the occasional cleaning, polish and replacement, and which even an American dentist will find it hard to beat.
