Oral Fixation
Wednesday, 10 January 2007Which is funnier? A speaking mistake or a cultural faux pas? How about both? While talking with M over the dirty dishes tonight, I was asked to consider something I had never thought of before: why the women in the documentaries about families with more than a dozen children never have any teeth.
First of all, I’d never dreamed that there was a documentary about such families, must less multiple documentaries, but it’s not beyond the realm of suspended disbelieve, a state I am perpetually in in Japan. On the other hand, I have often wondered about the nation’s dental state, as many Western foreigners to Japan have. With my former coworkers living all across Japan, we all had different stories to report to one another during bi-annual conferences, yet one story was universally the same: the children’s teeth were ghastly, and the teachers’ weren’t much better.
Some blamed the lack of flouride in the water and tooth paste (rumor has it that an over-flouridation of the water supply by the occupying US forces in the 50s left a bad taste in the mouth of the water-works powers that be), other’s blame it on the calcuim depravity caused by giving birth to 12 children. Others noted that while there is no shortage of tooth brushes or enthusiasm for brushing, no one really knows the proper technique. Regardless of the cause, the effects are undeniable. Often young children don’t lose their baby teeth; they rot out. And amongst adults, benign cases of snaggle tooth and halitosis are commonplace, while the occassional case of pneumonia linked to untreated cavities are not unheard of. Which leaves a lot of people asking how the second largest economy of the most literate, highly educated, and longest living country in the word could tollerate such poor dental hygene practices.
Good question, indeed, but it’s often harder to find answers about foreign cultures than about one’s own culture. So, turning the question back on US culture, why are Americans such hypocondriacts when it comes to dentistry? Could it be fear mongering dentists? Surely, it takes a high level of skill and training to be a dentist, and the service they provide is hardly trivial, but in the backs of their mind, dentists must realize that they are only a step above pediatrists, with the difference that dentists can sell themselves as plastic surgeons while pediatrists have to differentiate their doctorate from that of Dr. Schoals. Insoles are to the never-perfect arch problem of pediatry as braces are to the never-perfect bite problem of dentistry. These problems have been the workhorse of their respective industries for decades, requiring expensive solutions that cause pain, distress, and self conciousness. These problems have kept their practiotioners fed, clothed, and housed. But for a dentist who wants more, striaght teeth aren’t enough. They need to be bleached whiter. They need to be shaved straighter. They need to be pimped and given an extreme makeover.
Forget healthier; Americans want to be prettier. Dentistry is the gateway drug to a prettier, plastic life of preventing problems that may never materialize. And while the extreme alternative of rotting teeth is definitely less attractive, I don’t find teeth so white that they glow in the dark an ideal alternative. Isn’t there a happy, natural medium?
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