Posted on 10/25/2010 4:56:34 PM PDT by nickcarraway
It wasn't until Aguirre noticed iconic gap-toothed model Lauren Hutton in the pages of her favorite fashion magazines that she realized her smile was not only unusual but maybe even beautiful.
"I guess I've always thought of it as a cool thing," says Aguirre, 48, of Concord, Calif.
These days, so does the beauty industry. Gap-toothed models were all over the runways at this season's Paris Fashion Week. Instead of fixing their teeth, some of Hollywood's freshest faces, including Anna Paquin and Elizabeth Moss, proudly sport a midline diastema, the dental term for the gap. And, last month, on "America's Next Top Model," host Tyra Banks sent a 22-year-old contestant from Boise, Idaho, to the dentist to widen her gap. The beauty blogosphere has been buzzing ever since. Men sport the gap, too, but culturally, there has always been a mystique about diastematic women. In Ghana, Namibia and Nigeria, a gap in women's teeth is a sign of beauty and fertility, says Bernice Agyekwena, a Ghanaian journalist and Gates Fellow of African Agriculture at the University of California-Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
"Some women even go to the extent of creating an artificial gap in their teeth because they want to meet the traditional standards set for African beauty," she says.
In the Western world, our fascination dates to the Middle Ages, when Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in "The Canterbury Tales" of the gap-toothed wife of Bath and her lustful ways.
But experts believe our new interest in the diastema represents a backlash against unattainable beauty standards and an obsession with perfection.
"I think for so long the look was cookie-cutter beauty, and it doesn't stand out," says Heather Muir, beauty news editor for Allure magazine in New York. "We're shifting to a more quirky beauty, and I think that includes women who have very fair skin, many freckles, or frizzy, big hair."
Two gap-toothed models in particular, Jac Jagaciak and Lindsey Wixson, caught Allure magazine editors' eyes recently on the Paris runways, Muir says. She also calls attention to recent ads by Chanel, Marc Jacobs and Miu Miu. All feature models with gaps between their teeth.
"This could be a confidence booster to a lot of girls out there who are 12 or 13 and mortified because they have a gap," she says. "Now's the time to let whatever is interesting about your look shine through. Embrace it."
For the most part, dentists agree. "From a clinical standpoint, there's no advantage to closing it," says Tim Patel, a Walnut Creek, Calif., dentist and assistant clinical professor at the University of California-San Francisco's School of Dentistry. If the gap is small, Patel may suggest fixing it to avoid periodontal issues down the line. Food can get stuck in there, after all.
"Obviously, I like to see perfectly straight teeth with no diastema," he says. "But if patients like it, I certainly don't try to encourage them to change it. By and large, it's an aesthetic issue."
Sylvia Lan, of Santa Clara, Calif., has always embraced her diastema. So have the lovestruck men who mention it before asking her out.
"They seem to think it's sexy," says Lan, a 40-something who works in sales. "Go figure. Instead of looking at my chest, they're looking at my teeth."
Les Blank's interest in gap-toothed women began in the eighth grade with a smiling beauty he admired from a distance. In 1987, the El Cerrito, Calif., director made "Gap-Toothed Women," a documentary homage to gap-toothed women living in the Bay Area. Hutton is also in the film. "They have an attractive, outgoing personality that's warm and vital," says Blank, who interviewed 100 women for the film. "The whole world is so full of artifice that I think people just want to see something natural and real."
When my daughter was two we were at the typical faculty/grad student get together. One of the more out there lesbians was admiring my little angel and said that she would be sought after by many lesbians not only because of her color, but because she had a gap tooth which is highly prized in lesbian circles for certain sex acts.
When I picked my jaw off the floor I removed myself and little gap-toothed angel from her presence.
She had her frenectomy at age eight. And orthodontia at age 12. And a bar welded behind her two front teeth.
(When I picked my jaw off the floor I removed myself and little gap-toothed angel from her presence.
She had her frenectomy at age eight. And orthodontia at age 12. And a bar welded behind her two front teeth.)
Speaking of spitting, I watched the baseball playoffs and is it mandatory that the players have to spit x amount of times throughout a game? Other sports don’t spit like that. I wonder if they ever think that some poor bastards have to come on behind them and clean up their mess.
Another geek
So how is an African woman artificially increasing her tooth gappage because it is the beauty ideal any different than a small chested woman is the U.S. getting breast implants because larger boobs are an ideal here? The writer seems to condone the African practice because it happens to back up their argument. But at the same time slags women trying to live up to the ideal of having straight non-gapped teeth. What a steaming pile.
And the notion that gap-toothed women are somehow inherently friendlier or open than the non-gapped type. Is this writer serious with this stuff.
If a women is beautiful then a gap won’t effect the overall impact of the facial symmetry, proportion and harmony that defines beauty in a classical sense. If she is ugly than the same gap is not going to make her any less so. The models described in the article are probably all beautiful in this classical sense. A gap between the front teeth is a very minor deviation on a woman like that and is easily integrated in the overall appearance.
Isn’t thinking gaps are more beautiful than no gaps the same as thinking the opposite in the big picture.
Isnt thinking gaps are more beautiful than no gaps the same as thinking the opposite in the big picture.
yes but the deep thinker that wrote this article seems to think he/she is have a transgressive moment here.
Cheers!
Did she just have an organ transplant?
I can’t believe some idiot (lesbo or not) had the NERVE to say something like that to a parent.
As a sexual abuse survivor (and the relative of one) I would’ve had a hard time not absolutely decking her/it.
I was appalled. I could not even think of a response. It woke me up to the narciscism of homosexuality.
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