America’s gotten to me, I finally got braces

Americans are mad about teeth, it almost seems everyone has a sparkly white grin on the streets of New York, so I finally took my wonky British teeth to the dentist and got braces, writes Holly Baxter

The joke’s on me... though maybe not for much longer (Getty)

If there’s one thing that defines America more than stars and stripes, apple pie and ice cream, cowboy boots and blue jeans, it’s teeth. Bright white, ruler-straight teeth are an American export, announcing themselves on every Hollywood screen and midwest gameshow. With expensive orthodontia a given in pretty much every American child’s teenage years, and few medical regulations on the bleaching strips that fill out the aisles in every New York pharmacy, you can’t help but feel a little inconspicuous walking the streets of Brooklyn with an NHS smile. After your 700th megawatt grin, you start running your tongue over your incisors and covering your mouth with a napkin when you laugh, lest you offend passersby with a tea-stained line of partially crumbling gravestones.

“Americans are mad about their teeth!” I hear you say. “Pay them no mind!” Well, it’s easy to say that when you’re firmly ensconced in Yorkshire or Reading or Edinburgh; less so when you live in a city where everyone’s mouth looks like it’s got a UV light permanently trained on it.

All of this is a long-winded way to say: I got braces. I’ve always been a bit insecure about my wonky front teeth but also a bit too shy to bring it up. Robust British dentists would pat me on the shoulder in London offices and say, “Well, they’re functional!” when I went in for a cleaning or a cavity. “They’re not… beautiful,though,” I’d respond, laughing it off in that I-don’t-really-care-but-I-do-but-ignore-me way we all get taught in compulsory lessons in UK schools, age four. “They’re teeth!” the dentists would respond, as if I’d just said my giraffe wasn’t blue enough or my armchair couldn’t fly. “Off you go, and I’ll see you in six months’ time.”