We should rise up and protest. It’s damned rude is what it is. Is what it is. But still, every time I see that commercial, I just wanna rise up and shoot the rude people. The date-standing up one, that was horrible the way the woman treated the guy. The way she looked at him too…ugh.
I remember wanting- and getting- glasses. Now i’m holding out for the Lasik. Though my glasses are kinda cool. I think they’re like the Dark Angel ones.
I hate those Invisalign ads. People should have to suffer in their teenage years, because obviously they don’t suffer enough. Smug twins shouldn’t get away with it.
And I’m not at all bitter that I wore braces for three years and still have crooked teeth. Oh no.
I had braces for a year. Mine were the type that they glued on to the teeth and changed the wires and the bands that held the wire into place. Of course they decided to come out with the different colored bands right after I got mine off.
Those commercials drive me crazy!
The people in them are so superficial, and when they talk they have a lisp.
Now, having a lisp isn’t a bad thing, but some people spend time to get rid of one, not get one.
I was just telling my husband that those have got to be bad for your teeth since they are covered most of the time I would think that there would be a bacteria problem.
The teacher one makes me upset too. Yep, let the little kid in your class feel like crap for your vanity.
Hey, Opal, nice to see you posting again!
Thanks, I’m not posting much… and I keep losing track of threads I’ve been reading. Ugh. I’m so damn sick…
MY friend’s sister, who is in her 40s, recently had her GOLD braces taken off. Now those looked cool!
What I do not understand is the increasing number of people my age (mid 20’s) getting braces. I mean, if you had a real alignment issue, wouldn’t it have been detected earlier, so that you would have worn braces in middle/high school, like everyone else? So I assume that most people who get braces when they’re older are doing it for basically cosmetic reasons. But if you’re doing for cosmetic reasons, then why are you getting an unsightly mouthful of metal at the time when the rest of your face looks its best? It seems like a dumb idea to me.
Of course, I don’t know much about orthodontia since I do not have the American obsession with giant perfect bright white teeth. I just don’t get it…David Bowie, for example, had terrible British teeth, but he’s still beautiful. Perfect teeth aren’t the reason that smiles are pretty…
That’s exactly my problem with these commercials! It’s the same as with the exercise/aerobics commercials. The people doing the exercise machines are all perfect. I want to see some fat slob get on the bowflex and then tell everyone how easy it is. I think if they showed some chick with nasty crooked bucktoothedness then people would realize that the metal braces help to hide the aforementioned nasty crooked bucktoothedness.
Talking to woman with metal braces: Oh wow, you got braces! Now that nasty bucktoothed smile is no longer visible behind all that metal!
Talking to woman with clear braces: You got braces? I can’t even tell 'cause all I see is your nasty bucktooth smile! Close your mouth woman!
Maybe they are taking advantage of dental insurance, that maybe their parents didn’t have? My SIL (age 43) recently got braces to correct some alignment and cosmetic problems. Her parents never had dental insurance when she was growing up and just couldn’t afford braces.
I also hate those commercials. The blind date one just feeds into that “women are shallow bitches” stereotype.
The one with the teacher and her pre-teen student is weird. It really creeps me out…it’s almost like she is flirting with him.
The one with the two doctors is just plain dumb.
**
Yes, I can see her getting an automatic gun of some kind and mowing down all those inconsiderate family members.
Slight tangent:
About 10 years ago (or so) there were commercials for colored contact lenses, aimed at people who didn’t really need corrective lenses, but maybe just wanted to change their eye color. The main theme of most of them was the poor ugly brown-eyed girl getting beautiful blue lenses and suddenly had men beating her door down. As a “brown-eyed girl” I was really insulted by those ads.
:::walks aways singing a certain Van Morrison song:::
Oh its just a conspiracy. The dentists of America have devised a plan. Driven by capitalistic urges, they imposed their cruel regime of…well, forcing people to wear braces just to highlight the American emphasis on appearance.
Eventually the breast implant people will be telling us that that’s just as necessary. I’m not paraonid, really! 
No i’m not bitter either. Still…let’s hope I get these puppies off in June/July of this year.
Also: There’s a teacher one too? Don’t tell me some bitch-goddess teacher is going to lampoon a hapless student for having visible braces! 
I finally have something to contribute that no one else has! Hurray! My boyfriend has been using Invisalign for about a year - he got it at a discount early on from a family-friend sort of dentist. First of all, the reason one would get Invisalign over metal is for cosmetic reasons, but then that’s why you’re getting braces in the first place, isn’t it? So I don’t understand why there’s something wrong with getting a less noticeable form of braces.
The little retainer things snap into four (two on top, two on the bottom) little white porcelain dots on your teeth, and they work the same as metal or other braces, although I suppose for exteme deformities, like those requiring headgear and so forth, perhaps they wouldn’t work. You can take them out whenever you’d like, but obviously you’re supposed to have them in all the time that you’re not eating. They do obviously trap food next to your teeth, but that’s easily solved by brushing your teeth after eating. Duh. I think you’d be able to keep your teeth cleaner, actually, since there’s not all that metal catching food in your mouth.
The BF has had them with no problems, and they are actually moving his teeth as promised, and no one knows he has them unless he mentions it because they are so unnoticeble.
The sister is a bitch for not talking to her other sister.
“Want to work at a fancy catered party with me? Oh, didn’t I mention that you’ll be stripping and performing a live sex act with a goat while I’ll be serving hors d’ouerves? Whoops!”
My favorite new ad campaign is for “Sarafem”
It seems too much like the FDS powder campaign - hey, guess what, your vagina smells - didn’t you know that? Well, it does, but here’s a spray to fix it. If you don’t use it, no one will ever love you and your dog will die.
I think I’ve strayed from the original topic too much. Anyway, Invisalign the product is kind cool, the ads are a little off - even the BF has mentioned that. He thinks they suck.
The ads suck.
Okay, now that I’ve said that, I’d like to say this: I’ve been wearing essentially the same thing as a retainer for about 10 years. After I got my (metal) braces off years ago, they gave me these .5 mm thick plastic things, basically molds of my “corrected” mouth and I’m supposed to wear them every night or so. I wear them about once a week and they definitely do move my teeth around (I’m missing pre-molars, they were never there so I have constant tooth-shift). Actually, I throw them on before going to bed and I’m good for another week, but if I go longer, I start getting headaches!
Sure, it’s not on the OP, but I felt like sharing, so there.
Because some people have slack-ass irresponsible parents who HAD dental coverage but REFUSED to get braces for their kids. Regardless of the fact that a child’s dentist may recommend that the parents to TALK to an orthodontist. So when your parents blow off their parental responsibilities, because they can afford braces but just don’t feel like paying for them… then you may just have to wait until a) you have good dental coverage (most plans won’t cover braces for grownups) or b) you can afford to pay cash for braces and c) hell freezes over because you’re not so shallow that you think people even give a damn if your teeth are crooked or not…
But I’m not bitter… really!
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned that the metal braces used in the ads are so unrealistic and out of date that they remind me of the Simpsons episode where Lisa gets the discount braces, lol. There’s a whole print campaign for those in magazines, too and they’re just as bad (if not worse!) In one there are two reporters side-by-side and the headline is “news…worthy” with the “news” over the metal braces woman and the “worthy” over the invisilign woman. Good God! Another one has a guy at a club sitting between two women and chatting up the invisilign chick while the metal braces chick gives them the evil eye. The metal braces are so grotesquely exaggerated in this ad that the woman can’t even close her lips over them! Come on!
Having worked for 2 years as an orthodontist’s assistant I can say that these would have limited applications, and they’re grossly misleading people in the ads. There’s no way for them to correct an overbite or an instance of a tooth that’s coming in sideways, etc. (For that you have to have a wire actually pulling the tooth down and into place over several months.)
As to why an adult would get braces, there are several reasons. I’d say about 15% of our patients were adults. Some couldn’t afford it when they were teens, or grew up in a country where orthodontia just wasn’t considered. Others are now in a professional position that behooves them to be better looking. Modeling, or sales, or motivational speaker, etc. Wasn’t an issue until then. Plus sometimes it’s not an issue of appearance; sometimes it’s about being able to chew food well enough to digest it better, or to correct snoring, sleep apnea or jaw pain.
Ack! I’ve only seen the print version of those ads and I hate them. I had braces for four friggen years and now it looks like my teeth are slipping out of alignment again (should have worn my retainer longer…)
Don’t those Invisalin braces cost significantly more? Somehow I doubt dental insurance is going to cover more than the cost of regular braces, so only more affluent teens will be able to afford them. And, like VogueVixen said, if they aren’t effective for every problem, there are going to be a lot of teenagers out there feeling like shit because they’ve been “disfigured” by ugly metal braces.
I’m suprized they didn’t have ugly braces girl in one of those awful head gears (correct term?). <shudder> I’m so glad I only had to wear mine at night.
Tracy
-Hoping against hope that TT didn’t inherit her teeth
Oops, one more point:
Yup, that’s what’s taking me back to the ol’ orthodontist, I don’t seem to be able to bite into food as well anymore. I’m going to have to hold off til next year though, because the stupid Army dental program won’t start me on braces and I won’t be able to afford them until hubby gets a better paying job.
Hijack alert!
Actually, PMDD is just a jumped-up name for regular old PMS. Just another example of corporate interests pushing products we don’t need in hopes of “curing” perfectly natural conditions & making us all shiny perky plastic Barbie dolls.
But I’m not bitter.
Oh Opal, count me as one who wanted braces in school.
So glad I didn’t get them though.
I heard they were really uncomfortable.
I never wanted glasses, I wore them since first grade. My eyesight is 650/20!
Just like Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD <- interesting the way that worked out) is just another name for shyness.
I can’t believe someone would take a medicine that could cause such nasty side-effects to fix a minor harmless problem.
If you think that’s strange… I wanted a broken arm or leg, just for the cast! Stupid thing is, I broke my arm during the summer I was 12. Couldn’t do anything fun, AND nobody could see it at school. Bummer.
That’s like saying clinical depression is bullshit because not being happy all the time is a minor problem. SAD is the extreme on an entire spectrum.
SAD isn’t just “shyness”, it’s a profound and detrimental aversion to social situations and interpersonal interaction. People with SAD can’t deal with people in what other consider normal situations. It can lead to occupational and educational problems. Studens with SAD skip classes, some can’t even leave their homes.
Just because medical science a designated a condition with an acronymical nomenclature doesn’t mean it’s bullshit.
Yeah, that was bad on my part. I wasn’t trying to minimize real problems like you describe, or to say that real SAD doesn’t exist. I know that there are cases that really exist. It just seems to me that it’s being marketed towards people who have even the slighest case, and not people who really need it. The way they describe it in the commercial makes me feel like I should be on medication. I guess I’m just sick of seeing all these medication commercials. It seems like everyone is on medication for something. So many people on prozac, ritalin, and other behavior changing drugs makes me wonder if medication is really the answer to these types of problems, and I’ve become quite skeptical of whether these conditions really exist or whether they’re overdiagnosed just to sell medication.