American Versus British Teeth

[Errata]

I'm not entirely sure that the British perception of American teeth as unnaturally white is necessarily correct. I mean, if you have them whitened then clearly it is unnatural. But I've spent a lot of time with Africans, Native Americans, and Middle Easterners and they tend to have some blindingly white teeth. And not just in contrast. I was watching a Yemeni man eat take out, and his teeth were the same color as the plastic spoon. He says they don't eat a lot of staining foods, like red sauce, brown sauce, wine, malt vinegar, etc. And the last time I was in England, the cuisine still seemed pretty heavy on the tannins and malts.

[TomTomKent]

Meh. My first trip to the dentist in seventeen years and I got complimentented on my healthy teeth. So there are some of us above, some of bellow and some of us right on the curve.

[c.d.]

Here in the U.S., everyone is STRONGLY encouraged to get their teeth examined and cleaned ever six months. Wait longer than six months and you will get a lecture from your dentist that will leave you in tears.

It is amazing what cosmetic dentistry can now do. My dentist has a book in his waiting room of the various procedures that can be done. The before and after pictures show someone with teeth that looked like they came from an exumed corpse and now looks like a movie star. Of course it is all very expensive.

The teeth fixation in the U.S. is also driven by more and more studies that show a strong correlation between oral health and heart health. One more thing to worry about.

c.d.

[Errata]

Here in the U.S., everyone is STRONGLY encouraged to get their teeth examined and cleaned ever six months. Wait longer than six months and you will get a lecture from your dentist that will leave you in tears.

It is amazing what cosmetic dentistry can now do. My dentist has a book in his waiting room of the various procedures that can be done. The before and after pictures show someone with teeth that looked like they came from an exumed corpse and now looks like a movie star. Of course it is all very expensive.

The teeth fixation in the U.S. is also driven by more and more studies that show a strong correlation between oral health and heart health. One more thing to worry about.

c.d.

I think every culture has something that draws a lot of focus. I think here we are a bunch of talkers, and very concerned with appearance. Stained teeth to us implies poor hygiene, so we fix it. I hear that toe tucks are a thing in France, because of women's obsession with shoes. They want perfect feet to fit into or show off exceptionally high end and fashionable footwear. So who knows.

It's kind of amazing what people choose to care about. I used to work for a guy who spent thousands of dollars each month on extremely expensive up to the second clothing for his wife. And she wore it under her burka. Now the burka was her choice, but I fail to understand why she wore custom Oscar De La Renta and Manolos under it. Nobody sees it.She was a trip actually. Couldn't ask for a nicer, funnier, more compassionate woman. She would unveil in the shop, because it was just me and her husband, and she told me all kinds of stories about being in the Saudi royal family, her time in Iran, her shock at the US, her irritation that her husband was so concerned for her sense of personal freedom that he was violating it. She taught me a few choice Persian swear words. Had a beauty massage three times a week, spent more on skin care products than I did on my car, complained that she needed another wife to get everything done. She had real diamonds in her manicures, and reapplied her hideously expensive makeup about every two hours.

And as shallow as she seemed, she gave about 70% of their income supplying battered women shelters, building a home and supplying a support staff for kids who got kicked out of their homes for being gay so they could stay in school, personally supported about a dozen single mothers with more than two children, renovated our Fisher house, and paid for the families of kids in Children's Hospital to go out one night every week, dinner, movies, skating, etc.

So if she wants to wear designer clothes under her burka, I don't have a problem with it. I don't understand it, but I support it.

[c.d.]

In Japan, it has become fashionable for women with straight teeth to get them made crooked. Apparently they think this makes them seem younger and some Japanese men are attracted to the look. Go figure.

c.d.

[c.d.]

One British person's experience with laser whitening that didn't go too well to say the least.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/nov/13/comment.charliebrooker

My dentist won't do laser whitening. He believes that it weakens your teeth.

c.d.

[Fleetwood Mac]

One British person's experience with laser whitening that didn't go too well to say the least.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/nov/13/comment.charliebrooker

My dentist won't do laser whitening. He believes that it weakens your teeth.

c.d.

I think the issue in England is scepticism, which is a traditional English approach to most things in life; whether it's grand political ideals or the more mundane aspects of life.

I think it's second nature in England to think: "so what, they're only teeth, having them straightened or whatever is not going to make a blind bit of difference to my life in the grand scheme of things".

I personally go to the dentists every 6 months to have them checked up and cleaned. Two reasons: 1) I'm a mug because it's forking out good money after bad to have them done so often (once a year should do) - by the way I've only had two fillings in my life 2) I'm a fan of hygiene.

It's a strange one really, because we spend more on washing products than anywhere else in Europe according to surveys. Perhaps it's a hangover from the days of Puritanism - scrub yourself into a frenzy to ensure cleanliness but don't alter how God made you. There's probably some truth in that - our food is pretty much how God made it - straight out of the ground and onto the plate with not much in the way of flavouring (thinking vegetables here).

[Fleetwood Mac]

Here in the U.S., everyone is STRONGLY encouraged to get their teeth examined and cleaned ever six months. Wait longer than six months and you will get a lecture from your dentist that will leave you in tears.

It is amazing what cosmetic dentistry can now do. My dentist has a book in his waiting room of the various procedures that can be done. The before and after pictures show someone with teeth that looked like they came from an exumed corpse and now looks like a movie star. Of course it is all very expensive.

The teeth fixation in the U.S. is also driven by more and more studies that show a strong correlation between oral health and heart health. One more thing to worry about.

c.d.

Last time I went there was a new woman doing the check up.

She went on and on about the wonder of dentistry and the wisdom in listening to her teeth centred mandate for a fulfilling life, as if teeth were the window to the soul.

Had me in tears? I nearly strangled her! Got right on my nerves. It was only will power that prevented me from losing my rag and saying: "look, just clean me teeth and I'll give you the money, if I want a lecture I'll ask for one".

[Robert]

Americans have more money to spend than us, so maybe these things become de rigeur, i.e. meet someone in unpolished shoes and it looks as if you don't respect the person....gradually changes to meet them without whitened teeth, facelift and boob job and that shows lack of respect too.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Americans have more money to spend than us, so maybe these things become de rigeur, i.e. meet someone in unpolished shoes and it looks as if you don't respect the person....gradually changes to meet them without whitened teeth, facelift and boob job and that shows lack of respect too.

Either that or many of us are trapped in the consumer lifestyle where somehow we've come to believe that fashion accessories will take us to a higher spiritual plane. Who needs books when some teeth whitener will enrich our lives to an extent our ancestors could have only dreamed.

[louisa]

I haven't read all the posts on this thread (for which I apologize) but regarding teeth I strongly suspect that American dentists are better than British. I am really now talking mainly about cosmetic dentistry.

I am a bit obsessive about my teeth. They've all been crowned - my first crowns being back in the eighties. I wanted beautiful white teeth, each tooth in precisely the shape I wanted it to be.

Well I found that almost without exception - here in the UK- that dentists had their own ideas of what I should have. It seems that dentists want people to have off-white teeth that resemble dentures - with no character to them whatsoever.

I wanted a mouthful of perfect white teeth but teeth that looked natural.

It's taken many years but at last I've found a dentist who listens to what his customer wants and can instruct his technician exactly according to instructions.

I paid a lot for my teeth so I think I should have them the way I want them.

I suspect if I was in America I would have had no problem.

[RivkahChaya]

At the risk of coming across ethnically bigoted, it is not the color (colour) or health of British teeth that Americans react to; it is when we see wealthy Brits with (healthy) crooked teeth that we ask why.

This is absolutely true. I don't know an American whose stereotype of the British involves rotten teeth. It's always crooked, especially buck-teeth. The rotten teeth stereotype we save for Appalachians.

Almost everyone in America today, working class and above has their children’s teeth straightened with braces. I survive on a school teacher’s salary (and the wife only works part tim,) but with a little savings and direction insurance we got bracers for both our children. (They needed them.) It has become (almost) a must in this society. There is a strong prejudice against crooked teeth here, right or wrong it screams low class, but that does not seem the case in Britain.

I had braces in the 1970s, when it was fairly common, although still something a minority of children went through. You had to have really, really crooked teeth to get braces for that alone, but if you needed your bite corrected, straightening your teeth at the same time was an easy add-on. It was probably difficult not to.

I had some oral surgery first, then braces and headgear. I had buck teeth, but the real goal was to align my bite, and stop my jaw from making a popping noise.

At some point, people whose children had crooked teeth, but didn't have a misaligned bite started wanting cosmetic correction. Maybe it had to do with cost dropping, or insurance covering it, or with the fact that new kinds of appliances eliminated the problem of braces promoting cavities (by trapping food and bacteria).

I repeat, it is not missing or discolored teeth we react to, they are just as common here, it is the absence of braces that surprises us; our teeth are just as unhealthy, they just look better.

Well, and if you eliminate the problem of braces causing decay, once they're removed, oral hygiene is easier, because bacteria doesn't get trapped between overlapping teeth.

Of course you must then wear a “retainer” to bed every night for the rest of your life, or they move again.

Say what? Once I was, in the estimation of my orthodontist, "done growing," I was done with the retainer. I wore braces & headgear for 2 years, and the retainer for four (minus a couple of weeks after I had my wisdom teeth out, when I was too swollen, then I had a new one made) years, and I was done.

[Errata]

Do the British remove wisdom teeth as often as we do?

[RivkahChaya]

Do the British remove wisdom teeth as often as we do?

If mine hadn't been removed, I would have been in serious trouble. All were impacted below the gum line, and one was growing sideways into the roots of the next tooth.

The only person I know who fortuitously kept a couple of wisdom teeth was a guy who got his front incisors (adult) knocked out in a playground accident. He just went without front teeth for years, but oddly, the gap started to close, a little on its own, and he got braces to move his eyeteeth all the way together. After the braces came off, in maybe two years, he got caps on his canines, so they looked like eyeteeth. I haven't seen him since we were about 14, but his teeth looked normal then, and supposedly when his top wisdom teeth came in, there'd be room for them.

Anyway, in the US, wisdom teeth aren't removed for cosmetic reasons, and since Americans aren't an ethnicity, we don't have unusually small mouths.

Unless we are very much less likely than other peoples to have lost teeth by age 20, or so, I guess other people put up with pain, abscesses, or yank other teeth that are more accessible.

I think a post-Boomer American has a much better chance of keeping all their teeth that people in other countries, assuming the person takes advantage of dental care, and dental products, I don't think it's likely that people in other cultures will have lost a tooth by age 20.

[RivkahChaya]

Do the British remove wisdom teeth as often as we do?

If mine hadn't been removed, I would have been in serious trouble. All were impacted below the gum line, and one was growing sideways into the roots of the next tooth.

The only person I know who fortuitously kept a couple of wisdom teeth was a guy who got his front incisors (adult) knocked out in a playground accident. He just went without front teeth for years, but oddly, the gap started to close, a little on its own, and he got braces to move his eyeteeth all the way together. After the braces came off, in maybe two years, he got caps on his canines, so they looked like eyeteeth. I haven't seen him since we were about 14, but his teeth looked normal then, and supposedly when his top wisdom teeth came in, there'd be room for them.

Anyway, in the US, wisdom teeth aren't removed for cosmetic reasons, and since Americans aren't an ethnicity, we don't have unusually small mouths.

Unless we are very much less likely than other peoples to have lost teeth by age 20, or so, I guess other people put up with pain, abscesses, or yank other teeth that are more accessible.

I think a post-Boomer American has a much better chance of keeping all their teeth that people in other countries, assuming the person takes advantage of dental care, and dental products, I don't think it's likely that people in other cultures will have lost a tooth by age 20.