Member-only story
The Social Status Of Having Good Teeth
Your teeth tell more about you than you know.
I grow-up going to the dentist every year regularly. I was lucky enough to have an aunt that is a dentist. She never charged my parents anything. This same aunt treats most of my family members for free. When I was about 15 years old, I needed to wear braces, and then my parents started paying for them because it wasn’t her speciality.
In Brazil, going to the dentist for the middle class is a priority. The first thing you do when you get rich in Brazil is to take care of your teeth, even if it means getting all of them removed and new ones implanted. I challenge you to find one rich person in Brazil with bad teeth. It’s almost impossible because in Brazil having good teeth is a social status. To be on Television in Brazil, you need to have good teeth (and for sure, it’s not the same in the UK).
After almost three years of wearing braces, I was finally free. Because I was so tired of taking care of my teeth, as I needed to go to the dentist almost every month, I never wore my retainers, and my smile isn’t as perfect as when I first took my braces out. This is the price I pay for being stupid at 18 years old (and not taking as serious as I should the health of my teeth).
