BRACE FACE

🎧 AUDIO QUACK 🎧

Skip Introduction : 1:45

“Is Mary the girl whose teeth go like this?” Verity crossed her fingers to illustrate the overlap of my two front teeth. Sausage had attended Verity’s sleepover on the weekend and had come back Monday morning with a full, brutal report.

To be fair to Verity, my two front teeth did look like they were humping. My mouth was too small, forcing my teeth to scrum together. The left canine had no room, so grew up high, away from the rest, like it had been excluded from the party. To top things off, I had an underbite, so I looked like Bart Simpson when he pulled a silly face.

Because the dental work was so complex, I found myself in a hospital at the age of fourteen, surrounded by specialists discussing how to fix my mouth. They informed me that they needed to break my jaw so they could put it in its proper place. This seemed rather…Game of Thrones, so we opted for an alternative route.

Patrick, the orthodontist, was a white-haired man who listened to Rod Stewart on repeat. He promised he could fix my mouth with the magic of metal—lots of metal.

I imagined my braces would be like the girls at school – rainbow bands that changed colour every few months. I imagined wrong.

My mouth looked like the inside of a Game Boy. The wires were thick and dark and angrily zig-zagged. There were two blue blocks stuck on my back teeth. And to solve my underbite, I had a metal plate fastened to the roof of my mouth, which required my mum to tighten every night with a small screwdriver.

I was devastated. If getting a boyfriend, like the guy from The Notebook, seemed unlikely before, it seemed impossible now.

But, during those vital GCSE years, along with learning about photosynthesis and the causes of WW2, I also discovered that if you’re happy to take your clothes off, you’ll get a boyfriend… even if you look like a Bond villain.

My braces came off in time for a major life event, the Year 12 prom. My teeth were no longer scrumming, and my bottom jaw was tucked behind my top one. My dental journey was over…or so I thought.

Like most teenage brace wearers, I didn’t wear my retainer every night, so by the time I was in my late twenties, I noticed the teeth had moved a smidge. It wasn’t much, but when I looked in the mirror, I could hear Verity’s echoey voice. “Is Mary the girl whose teeth go like this?”

The childhood trauma fed into my insecurities, and my thoughts began to spiral. Maybe the real reason why men refused to procreate with me is because of my wonky lateral incisor tooth – not my bad jokes.

I was back in an orthodontist chair with a dark-haired, blue-eyed Liverpudlian looking down at me. His name was Jim. When Jim examined my X-ray, he told me I had the biggest nerves in my teeth he had ever seen. I told him he wasn’t the first man to tell me that. And then he laughed, uncomfortably.

Cigarettes After Sex was playing, as he hoovered up my saliva, and fitted my Invisalign.

Got the music in you, baby, tell me why

Saliva Hoover: *VOOOOOOOOOOOOM*
Got the music in you, baby, tell me why

Saliva Hoover: *VOOOOOOOOOOOOM*

When he held up the mirror to show me his work, I realised I had made the same mistake as I did as a teenager. I thought I would resemble the smiling woman on Instagram, whose Invisalign was, well, invisible. But my mouth was too complex (again), so I had to have stumps on all my front teeth.

My friends were not supportive. I sent Sausage a grinning selfie with my new brace. I needed her to say, You barely notice it. Instead, she sent me a screenshot of Sex and the City, the episode when Miranda got braces. “This reminds me of you,” she said.

And then there was dating. If it wasn’t tricky enough to try and lure a man away from his life of freedom of football, mates and Camden Hells, try adding a brace. Every time I wanted to eat or drink coffee, I had to take the Invisalign out, which made me look like a grandmother taking out false teeth. It wasn’t sexy. And I decided I would have to wait until they came off before I did any more luring.

I had them in from June until December, and on the day of the last appointment, I was raring for Jim to take them off.

“How’s your teeth?” Jim asked, as I settled in the chair for the last time.

“Great. How are yours?”

He laughed, uncomfortably.

I don’t know what I expected to happen to my dating life once my lateral incisor tooth was straight. I guess I imagined that if I smiled, a man would freeze and say, “Your teeth are the straightest teeth I’ve ever seen. I’ve got to take them to Venice, right now.” But this never happened. Even when I gave a man my widest grin from across the tube carriage, he didn’t rush over to procreate. He just moved away, uncomfortably.