Louis Wise contemplates the importance of straight teeth

Louis Wise gives the not so straight talk about teeth
Louis Wise24 October 2019

My father is a lovely man who only ever expresses two areas of concern for me.

One is my tennis serve. We’ll be chatting about anything — parking spaces or John Bercow — when suddenly he’ll say, ‘And you just need to get that serve a bit better! I mean, I don’t doubt you can do it!’ The other is my teeth.

I have okay teeth actually, or so I thought. Over the past 10 to 15 years, one of my two lower front gnashers has begun to turn sidewards, pressured by all the ones behind. I barely noticed it happening (I even dared to think it was cute) but dad finds this acutely worrying. ‘If you ever wanted to go on TV,’ he’ll start, again apropos of nothing. It’s at this point that I protest that if I ever even dreamed of getting on TV — humiliating myself on First Dates, trying to become an even sexier Eddie Mair — there are at least 17 other factors that would stop me. However, watching telly recently I’ve begun to see that he might have a point.

First, I watched a reality show on which one contestant’s teeth were, let’s kindly say, ‘British’; next, I saw another featuring a guest with terrifying, super-aligned ice-white veneers. Both felt like extremes, and both looked very exposing. Teeth, I realise, are the kind of thing that you can afford to feel very relaxed and liberal about, until your own start caving in. I was also going to advance a thesis that we Brits still don’t care, and well done us — until I counted my friends who’ve had something done over the years. One, two. Three, four, five, six. In each case I’d said, ‘Okay, but you really don’t need to,’ and in each case I’d meant it, but I can’t deny they look better. I just don’t want us all to go the full Simon Cowell, if that’s okay.

My only other complaint about my teeth is that they’re pretty yellowed, from a good 20 years spent glugging coffee. Oddly enough this is also down to my dad. When I was 13, he decided I needed to start drinking it every morning because I was so shockingly awful at waking up. Looking back, there’s probably something quite off in making your young child mainline caffeine, but I can’t deny I needed it. I had things to do, I had grades to get. As for the curve in my lower set, we agree to disagree. Still, in both cases, I guess I’m quite touched by his concern.

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