Dental Health vs. Looks

In the current age of beauty and looks and facades, it probably comes as no surprise to anyone in America that people want straight teeth that are white not because of health, but primarily because of how they look. Now, at a certain level of understanding this mentality, I don’t find it that harmful considering that people are still ultimately improving the health of their teeth overall. I mean, more power to you if you can get a healthy mouth as a side effect of focusing on your image more than anything.

The problem I find with it, though, is the amount of shaming and distaste that comes along with image-first dental care. For example, I have quite healthy teeth and know others who do the right things for their teeth, yet there are some imperfections that exist from not having braces as a child or from other things, like trauma, unrelated diseases and conditions, and other things.

What’s unfortunate for some of these people is that those with “perfect” (putting this in quotes for now since I don’t believe perfection is needed in the looks of one’s teeth) teeth are often quick to write off others with “worse” teeth based on looks alone. While straight teeth that are white denote that they’re healthy, there’s nothing to say that uneven teeth aren’t also healthy. And that’s where the problem arises with people who date, have friends they frown upon, or other things like job interviews.

 

I think if we all celebrated healthy teeth as something to strive for, rather than the image of our teeth, we’d see less of this misunderstanding happening, be it on dates, interviews, or among friends.

Now, I will say that while looks don’t determine health that much, smell definitely does. If you meet someone whose breath smells pretty bad, there’s likely more going on than just the garlic they recently ate. While it’s possible that it’s something else, bad breath almost always comes back to poor dental health and gingivitis, something I can commiserate with considering my childhood spent not flossing. Nonetheless, you can’t be faulted for judging someone based on the smell of their breath opposed to the looks of their teeth.

Overall, it’s fine to be worried about how your teeth look if you think it improves your own visage, but focusing on the health aspects are far more important. You should look at the perfection aspect as a great side effect to the health aspects rather than the reverse.