Fashion
The Novelty of a Natural Smile
At a time when celebrity veneers seem to be a norm, Aimee Lou Wood of “White Lotus” has found fans of her perfectly imperfect teeth.
“I love your teeth. You’re from England, right?” Charlotte Le Bon asks her co-star Aimee Lou Wood in an early episode of this season of “The White Lotus.”
Ms. Wood’s smile is broad, beautiful and something of a novelty these days — both among her castmates and in a broader sea of actors with straight, evenly spaced teeth having been apparently willed into submission by orthodontics or cosmetic modification.
The line, which Ms. Le Bon improvised, turned out to be prescient.
Online, viewers of the show have also begun praising Ms. Wood, who is indeed from England, for choosing to keep her natural smile. The praise has also prompted a question: When did everyone’s teeth get so perfect?
Emma Dickson, 30, said seeing Ms. Wood onscreen felt “comforting.”
Like Ms. Wood, Ms. Dickson has a gap between her front teeth. As an actor and medical aesthetician, Ms. Dickson, who lives in Chicago, said she was all too familiar with the pressure to have flawless pearly whites. She described the style of veneers that are so ubiquitous in Hollywood as the “copy-and-paste smile,” and said she was saddened when celebrities with teeth resembling her own appeared to correct them.
“I feel like in the beginning of the ‘Real Housewives’ franchise and ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians,’ there was this fascination with the most bleached tooth you could have,” said Sarah Hahn, a prosthodontist in Fremont, Calif., who has carved out a niche for herself on TikTok analyzing celebrity smiles. “It became more and more prevalent. So many people were doing it.”
“You could name off a million celebrities,” she added, “and they were all getting veneers.”
Over time, as the look became more widespread among celebrities, everyday people began to take a harsher look at their own smiles.
