Watch your mouth!
White and straight teeth are
over-valued. We accept a level of unnecessary, violent, medical
intervention in our mouths that most of us would not tolerate
anywhere else in or on our bodies. In fact we voluntarily pay for it.
And we subject our children to it, with whiter ideals and more
intervention and expense normalized for each new generation. In other
areas of health care and healing there are more options, rooted in
traditional and/or holistic paradigms that tend towards less
intervention, less hierarchical relationships between doctor/healer
and patient, and less involvement in big pharma or the
medical-industrial-complex. In medical dentistry we have once again
nurtured the worst of our religio-racist ideologies by fusing
'cleanliness' and 'purity' with 'healthy' and 'privileged.' And like
most body-fascist ideals, we have obediently pursued (and demanded of
our Hollywood and pop stars) straight white teeth beyond our limits,
both pain and financial. Too many dentists (and too many car
mechanics) try to sell more services than are necessary just to make
more money. This happens so often, it seems normal, like bleached
teeth. It's called capitalism, and it's happening in your mouth.
Strong, healthy, long lasting teeth do not need to be pure white or
straight, and neither do you.
PS
Brushing immediately after eating
sabotages your mouth's built in cleaning and healing mechanisms. It
is now recommended that we wait at least 30 minutes. It's unlikely
that your dentist told you that, and if they did, it was less than 10
years ago, and they definitely didn't apologize for giving you bad
health advice for the previous years. Maybe the medical research is
recent but the knowledge, or perhaps wisdom, that our bodies have
self-cleaning and self-healing mechanisms should not be news to first
world people with university degrees. But the history of the
university, despite its brief flirtation with alleged universal
access, has always been to institutionalize hierarchies of knowledge
and create a sect of wealthier, more privileged, more powerful
'leaders.' You do not deserve to be hired or kissed because your
teeth are bloodily scraped and toxically bleached. And you look
ridiculously unbelievable playing 'real' people on TV. Again, strong,
healthy, long lasting teeth do not need to be pure white or straight,
and neither do you.
2 comments:
I actually think about this a lot. As a medievalist. There's the whole whitening and straightening thing, which you address here -- let's all try to have "perfect" teeth which are highly unnatural -- AND there's the whole let's save our teeth at all costs thing. I ask my dentist sometimes, why? Why do we need to save the teeth? Why don't we just get dentures? Or eat porridge? She has no answer.
BUT! The orthodontic surgeon, in the process of saving one of my teeth, cut the gum back and scraped under to gum line, WHICH, I was delighted to find out, we have been doing for hundreds of years. Only it used to take longer, and hurt more.
Anyway. Yes. Teeth are a major and obvious signal, and we have lost our minds.
hellonews
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