Ah yes, personal experience masquerading as fact. :smack:
“They were all like that”, huh? :rolleyes:
As this board is dedicated to fighting ignorance, I’ll mention that I am 58 years old and have experienced dentists in London and two country towns.
All were National Health (so the treatment was covered by insurance), all were excellent and I have never had any pain.
Apart from wisdom teeth, I still have all my teeth (none of them are whitened…)
I teach at a school with over 1000 pupils and 150 staff. In discussions over 22 years with pupils, colleagues and parents, there has never been a single complaint about dentists.
It’s not that we prefer wonky teeth exactly, but we certainly do take the piss out of anyone who has them whitened or straightened when, by UK standards, they looked fine before. Someone I know, who used to have a gap between his front teeth, moved to the US for a while and got them ‘fixed’ over there- he is now known as ‘XXX with the teeth’, and gets quite a lot of (good natured as he’s a nice guy) ribbing over it.
And yes, caring ‘too much’ about your appearance is commonly seen as ‘less masculine’ in Britain, especially when it involves spending large sums of money. This is a cultural difference, why is it hard to believe? Though come to think of it, women don’t get a pass on unnatural teeth either.
My teeth overlap slightly at the front; no-one has ever mentioned it, including my dentist (never had a barbarian one either, though I have heard stories). I have no fillings; I have good teeth. Even if I magically became a billionaire, it would not occur to me to have them ‘fixed’.
It is the done thing to get bad teeth fixed, actually. It’s just that a tiny amount of wonkiness is not considered that bad - though actually fixing that wonkiness is also covered under the NHS.
I don’t think Brits should have to defend their dentistry when there’s no evidence that British teeth are actually worse. TBH, given the huge differences in costs for individuals needing their teeth fixed it seems likely that British poor people probably have better teeth.
Naturally, that’s why I said people who have the option to but choose not to. If poverty is the issue, then those people don’t have a choice. But some of the responses in this thread seem to indicate that some people make a conscious choice not to fix their teeth even though they would have the means to do so. And those are the ones I was targeting with that statement.
I live in England and I know someone so phobic about dentists that she cannot bear to be in the same room as someone talking about them and, yes, she does have to be sedated for a check-up.
Personally, I think she is a drama queen and I’m phobic about dentists myself.
I can only speak for myself but I’m pretty sure most of us won’t be offended since we are all well aware of the fact that we probably have the most fat people on Earth and in history.
BTW doesn’t that one dude on British version of Top Gear have pretty… teeth? A serious question: would any American TV producer put a host on their show with his teeth?
Well these four are because in Japan the protruding eye-tooth is considered a ‘charm’ - similar to dimples or Cindy Crawford/Marilyn Monroe’s mole - you certainly wouldn’t want either of those ladies to remove their trademark beauty mark - Japanese ladies wouldn’t want to remove their beauty mark either.
So does that indicate British going Hollywood? If people on media all have white and straight teeth, I’d think it would affect the norm sorta like the skinny model phenomena.
Well, that was the aim of this thread, ie, to figure out why there is such notion about exclusively these two country folks whether it is true or stereotype.
