If you watch much tv, movies or even some female singers there’s a lot of sexy ladies with overbites.
Why do Americans spend a fortune on orthodontics?
I’m a former patient (male) that wore braces for 6 years. Then a permanent lower retainer into my thirties. I started getting gum disease from the retainer and they removed it. By age 40 my overbite was back. I’m still alive, happy, and chew fine.
I realize in extreme cases an overbite can adversely effect mastication. But we’re sending kids for braces like it’s a rite of puberty.
Any thoughts? Is there a gender bias? Women with overbites are sexy, but men with similar overbites aren’t?
I’ve heard comments many times about Brits and bad teeth. I watch several Brit shows and it’s not unusual to see a crooked tooth, overbite etc. Britain is a wealthy nation. They could spend money on whatever they feel is important. Maybe a crooked tooth isn’t that big a deal to them?
How about the rest of Europe? Do most kids get braces?
Really, my sister had a broken arm and it healed up just fine without a cast. Why do we put casts on broken arms like it’s some kind of rite of passage?
Of people who get orthodontic treatment, not everybody’s problem is an overbite. Not everybody’s problem is just fine if they leave it be. Different issues call for different methods of treatment. 6 years, and a permanent retainer? That’s way more treatment than average. And, has any dentist advised you about issues you may have in the future? I had braces for 5 years, and within a week of my retainer breaking (because of an entirely foreseeable design flaw) my overbite was back. It stems from an issue that would require surgery to correct, which I have opted to forgo, and because of that, while I “chew fine” right now, I am at high risk for degenerative arthritis in the temporomandibular joint.
I can’t fathom why “what other people find sexy” is even a factor here.
I think American orthodontics are mostly a giant scam. There is no need for everyone to have a perfectly aligned bite. As long as you don’t have functional problems, severe crookedness, or a disfiguring overbite (something like this), your teeth are going to be fine.
I have straight, white, square teeth, with no gaps, which also have a large overjet between the top and bottom. I get tons of compliments on my teeth.
My parents insisted on spending thousands of dollars on braces which I didn’t want. I got them removed when I turned 18 and I never wore my retainer, so they are right back where they were pre-braces. I like my overbite and it has zero negative effect on my life or my teeth… and my boyfriend of 6 years has a ‘thing’ for overbites.
I have an overbite and have always wanted to get it fixed, but it would be far too complicated at this point. As a teen I was quite sensitive about it, but now I don’t really care. Although if I could wave a wand to fix it I would. (I guess I do care, but not enough to invest the time and money into fixing it.)
I somehow don’t understand the overbite thing. Don’t the vast majority of people have an overbite of some degree? I see most people I’ve met to have at least a slight overlap of the top teeth over the bottom teeth. It seems odd when I see someone with front teeth that meet along the edges. The pictures posted so far just look like normal bites to me.
It’s only a problem when teeth are crooked, or crowded, or when deciduous teeth are retained behind the permanents and such, causing problems with mastication and subsequent pain or long-term disfigurement, isn’t that correct? Cosmetic issues with overbite would just be if the teeth aren’t straight up-and-down. My stepsister had her braces removed a couple of months early and her front teeth slant a little bit forward and I think that looks kinda funny. Is that what people are talking about?
My dentist told me when I was 12 or so that he would put braces on me if I wanted “movie star” teeth, since my bottom front teeth meet in a “V” rather than totally straight, and my eyeteeth are a little rotated, but he said there was no medical reason to do it. I said, “great!” and am perfectly happy with my smile that I still get compliments on 28 years later. Teeth don’t need to be perfectly straight to be attractive, but symmetry makes a big difference, I think.
There was another thread a while ago about overbites, and I didn’t get it then, either. It just seems like what people are referring to is what I see most of the time and doesn’t even seem like something to even notice.
Underbites, though, those are a whole different ball game !
The top teeth are supposed to come down in front of the bottom teeth, but they are supposed to fit fairly closely together (like under a certain amount of mm apart). These days, if your child has space between the two over a certain number, even with perfectly straight, non-gappy, normal-looking teeth, your dentist will recommend orthodontia. They want everyone to have an absolutely perfect ‘bite’.
My overbite is classed as ‘severe’ BTW. And my teeth look perfectly normal.
Upper and lower teeth that met on the edges would be classified as an underbite.
A receding lower jaw is not an overbite, although it’s often referred to as such. It’s retrognathism. Often it’s combined with overbite.
I had a pretty prominent overbite but more importantly I had lots of spaces between my teeth due to, I guess, a big jaw bone. When, at fourteen, I got my braces off after having worn them for two or so years I had a “perfect smile” which was great. But as another poster said, I didn’t wear my retainer and they slowly reverted. Over the years I’ve lost a few teeth so now the spaces are back plus the overbite (though maybe not quite as prominent). To this day I get compliments on my smile which I personally am self conscious about but which seems, to the outside world anyway, to be nice.
As to why overbites are sexy to some people, I had a male friend tell me once that they tend to form your lips into a shape that hints at, er, a propensity for oral sex.
Underbites, however, always look to me like the person is always conflicted and holding a grudge. Think Keira Knightley.
As for the big push for orthodonture, I agree it is cosmetic is many instances but I think many people don’t realize the effects having teeth out of alignment have on all your other teeth and jaws which can lead to a myriad of problems.
I recall my Orthodontist making a plastic Paris mold of my teeth before my braces went on. It was very obvious what was out of alignment. I had gaps between a few teeth. The dentist cut out a piece of gum tissue that was keeping my two front teeth apart.
I’m pretty sure he made another mold before the braces came off. This was late 1970’s.
I looked for the pictures I uploaded for some thread of awkward adolescent pictures - while a degree of overbite is normal (and what I have now) there is a lot to be said for modern American orthodontics. I had the kind of overbite normally associated with cliched Asian scientists warning the multitudes of Godzilla’s approach, okay? And I met a girl from my college class last weekend at our reunion and… Jesus Christ her parents should have taken out that second mortgage, okay? She looked awful. Her teeth were all pointy and two of them were erupting out of the gums up above her teeth and, good lord, it was bad. She would have been a pretty girl without the tooth stuff. That’s why Americans pay the big bucks for orthodontics, not necessarily to fix things that are fine on their own.
ETA - sorry, at the beginning I meant to say that I’ve obviously deleted those pictures out of shame. I’ll see if I can find them somewhere for the public good.
My overbite was so bad my teeth actually fit over my bottom lip when I closed my mouth. I had to wear a retainer for four years to push back my teeth before they even put me in braces.
I don’t really get it either. What is meant by “over,” like the top teeth hang down too far by x mm, or are too far forward by x mm (aka bucktooth)?
For those of us not grasping the nuance, could some of you link to pictures to illustrate the difference between a normal bite and an overbite? Really clear examples in your opinion. So far none of the pictures in either thread have made this more obvious.
They started calling me Bucky when I was around eight and it stuck. I pretty well abandoned my home town to get away from the constant reminder that I was malformed. I was part of a visible minority that wasn’t cut any slack by the politically correct crowd. Leaving aside the death of my mother at 15, it was the most emotionally traumatic ordeal I’ve ever faced. I simply got my front four teeth pulled at the age of 35 in favour of a partial plate. No regrets.
I forked over many thousands of dollars for braces for my two daughters without blinking an eye.
I suspect that the ladies in question are viewed as sexy because of their charming personalities and forthright opinions on matters of social importance. The over bite is neither a sufficient or required condition to be viewed as sexy.
