I've had this kicking around in my head for a while, and realized that the Feministing community is pretty damn good at dissecting societal expectations of how we look. My question is, what in the world is up with the obsession with teeth whitening?
It seems like a while ago, the only place you'd have your teeth whitened was at the dentist's office for a hefty sum. Over the last handful of years, suddenly I feel like I can't get away from teeth whitening products - whitening toothpastes, trays, sticky strips.
I find myself falling prey to it - I stare at my teeth in the mirror and wonder if they're gross and yellow, despite the fact that I brush twice a day and always floss in the mornings and visit the dentist regularly. Why am I feeling this way? Would it even cross my mind if it weren't for the fact that the products now exist at the drugstore? Did this market exist prior to these products, or did the products create the market?
And I've been trying to keep an eye out - has anyone seen commercials or ads for these products that feature men? Since I started keeping tally, they've all featured women.
Several times, I've researched the prices and customer feedback of all the whitening strips, but I can never bring myself to actually spend the money since in the end, it seems so frivolous and unnecessary. Any thoughts?
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Not to mention freakin' PAINFUL.
Interestingly, Japanese women used to dye their teeth black because it was beautiful. Not to mention we've been breeding for how many centuries without being attracted to someone's pearly white teeth?
I asked my dental surgeon about teeth whitening when I was 17, and he had a very uneasy look on his face. He said that teeth are naturally different shades of yellow and white, and that there is no reason to whiten them any. Turns out they destroy your enamel, which isn't one bit healthy for your teeth. I used to hate my teeth, too, but teeth just weren't meant to be pearly white. This doesn't mean there is anything wrong with wanting them to be white, it just means that having it as a beauty standard is ridiculous.
After that, I learned to love my yellowish teeth and spend my money on other things to alter my appearance, according to how I wanted to look, not how people who obsessed over magazine images wanted me to look. I hope this helps!
I asked my dentist about it, too, and he shrugged it off saying that my teeth were tooth colored and not to worry about it. It made me feel a lot better.
Well, of course women are featured in the ads, since we're the Keepers of Pretty and we don't have nearly enough things to obsess about! /snark
I think there's also a serious classist element to this. I'm poor, and the only time I go to the dentist is when a tooth is rotting out of my head. Like personal trainers and organic food, teeth whitening is something only rich people can afford.
Agreed. I haven't been able to afford to go to the dentist for about six years for checkups - or anything else, for that matter - and my dentist visits were equally sporadic as a child. I have quite yellow teeth, despite brushing and flossing regularly. I have a deep-seated love of tea, so I've learned to accept my yellow teeth; at least they're straight.
Ahh, the joys of capitalism. In order to have perpetual economic growth, you have to have perpetual demand for new products. The problem is, people don't initially believe they need the new products, so you have to convince them that they're disgusting and unlovable without your product so they'll buy it. As soon as you have everyone on board and buying your product, you have to invent a new one, and start creating a demand for that one, or the economy will not continue to grow... And on and on and on it goes.
I don't like my teeth. I want them to be whiter; and if I had the money, I'd probably do more about it.
I'm not sure Rachel is quite hitting it on the head. People want things. No matter how much you get, there's something else you want. It's just human nature. Sure, it pays to hype up why someone needs what you're selling, but capitalism doesn't just work because of manipulation, it works because there are only so many people, only so many resources, and we have to somehow figure out a way to sort them between each other. If I can give myself marginal value, I'm going to. If I do it often enough, I'll accumulate quite a bit of value. I'm sure plenty of people will think that whole concept is horrible and wrong and pity me or something, but I'm just giving myself the most options I can to do what I want when I want to. If having great teeth gets me a little more attention and gives me a little more power, I'm interested.
What I'm trying to figure out though, is where this idea that blindingly white teeth are "better." I liked nightingale's quote from her dentist about teeth being "tooth colored."
When teeth whitening was only a dentist-only, high priced service, I figured that people who used it were people who had heavily stained teeth, outside the ordinary "tooth colored" norm, such as from smoking, unusually porous teeth that absorbed coffee more than normal, etc. Or maybe if you're an actor whose teeth are going to be the size of my head on a movie screen. Not because white teeth are pretty.
Why do people want things? Why did people want pet rocks? I'm trying to dig into the idea of whether bright white teeth are something that people without specific tooth problems wanted before the drug store products were available.
Of course people want things. But they don't believe they need the millions of things that we currently think we can't live without unless they live in our consumer culture where you're defined by your belongings, and every "problem" you allegedly have can be solved by buying things. A simple survey of other cultures and historical periods supports this. The generations that lived in America before we became a manufacturing economy (and therefore consumer culture to support it) generally believed you should only buy something if you really needed it, and felt that it was almost immoral to spend money on things you don't need, and to live in debt. Contrast that to current attitudes. If that's not convincing enough, look at the pharmaceutical industry, which now places many ads that don't even tell you what the drug is supposed to treat. They just say "ask your doctor about X," and millions of people ask their doctor about X, without even knowing what it's for.
There are a couple of great books on the history of persuasive advertising and the PR industry that I could recommend to you if you're interested. They outline the intent of modern persuasive advertising and PR, often in the words of advertisers and PR theorists themselves, which indicate that the move from informative to persuasive advertising was motivated by this very concern - that consumers didn't believe they really needed all the products that advertisers had to sell. So the focus shifted from informing you how their product met a need you currently had, to convincing you that you had a need that you previously didn't know about, in order to sell you more products.
But WHY do you want white teeth?
Because somebody convinced you that white teeth are "better" - even though the default color of teeth is a sort of yellowish white, basically bone color.
Beyond that, you seem to have resigned yourself to the idea that you are just a commodity, and there is no way that you in particular and the human species in general can ever rise above that dollar ruled "meat puppet" status.
And that is very sad!
I never actually thought about teeth-whitening as being marketed mostly towards women, but that's a good point. I don't think there's anything particularly bad about teeth-whitening, though-- almost all beauty products are geared towards women.
In comparison to most other beauty routines, teeth-whitening seems pretty innocuous to me. 38 bucks for Crest strips, why not? A helluva lot less painful and time-consuming than shaving.
How about Zero dollars for teeth whitening products, and accepting your naturally yellowish teeth for their natural color, for Zero dollars?
That sounds a LOT better than further enriching the cosmetics tycoons!
Maybe there are more women in these commercials...but I'm sure I've seen a good number of men in toothpaste and crest white strips commercials. Also, among the people I know who have whitened their teeth I'd say it's pretty even among men and women. I don't think tooth whitening is something that's been gender specified like leg shaving or high heel shoes.