Brace Face

Who says braces are just for teens? Lizzie Simon pays a midlife visit to an orthodontist.

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One mellow morning while co-kvetching with my father, I reckoned with the problem on my face. “The gap between my front teeth is widening,” I said.

He brushed it off, without hesitating: “I think a gap looks great on a woman.”

Ok, then. I promptly let it go. My father, now in his late 70s, is a reliable measurer of what and what not to worry about. He spent most of his career in public health as an epidemiologist before retiring to Wellfleet, Cape Cod, where I was visiting with my husband and kids for a week. 

At the end of the trip, my parents took us out for a nice dinner. We had lobster and fried whole belly clams and corn on the cob and wine and while we were setting off to find our separate cars in the parking lot, my father waved me in to make a pronouncement. I wasn’t surprised. He does this at the end of all of our visits, saying something supportive, firmly, like, You’re doing a great job or I’m proud of you type of thing. Except this time he leaned in and said, “I’ll pay for orthodontics.”

All along at dinner when he was staring at me, I thought it was with a kind of dad-gaze of love, but apparently it was more in fixation with my teeth, a concern mounting in his consciousness. He doesn’t like confrontation. It probably drove him bananas watching me eat corn on the cob.

While we were setting off to find our separate cars in the parking lot, my father waved me in to make a pronouncement. I wasn’t surprised. He does this at the end of all of our visits, saying something supportive, firmly, like, You’re doing a great job or I’m proud of you type of thing. Except this time he leaned in and said, “I’ll pay for orthodontics.”

I told him I didn’t need him to pay for it, and I got my 47-year-old rear end into an orthodontist’s chair, where I was scanned for an elaborate campaign of teeth straightening, forecasted to take 12-18 months, during which I would wear a slightly different invisible retainer each week that would ever so subtly and progressively move all of my teeth in to their correct positions.

That summer had been unexpectedly expensive. My kids’ babysitter accidentally sideswiped another car while driving mine. The water flow in the rental property I own slowed to a trickle. And I was signing up for $6500 worth of orthodonture.

Picture me with my mechanic standing before the open mouth of my car. Picture me with my plumber standing in the boiler room gazing at the filtering system and the tubes zig zagging along the walls and ceiling. Picture me with my orthodontist standing in full view of my x-rays. Disjointed undergird everywhere, about which I had been unconscious. That’ll cost you.

Invisible retainers were invented in the ‘90s not by orthodontists but by a couple of Stanford MBA students who imagined that they could do the work of braces, but less embarrassingly. They also envisioned that they could reach beyond teenagers and inspire millions of adults to fix their teeth, exponentially expanding the consumer group who would get dental work. And yet people don’t seem to discuss it, which just goes to show that people would still prefer to hide or keep private the shame and labor of fixing their teeth.

Simon before the invisible braces. “My daughter Ray took it when she was 4 back in the summer of 2018. The gap is pronounced but not yet a problem.”

On the afternoon my first retainer was to be installed, I thought of backing out. This was going to be an elaborate, long-standing ordeal. For what, exactly? I don’t have a career or a marriage that require well-aligned teeth and I only rarely look closely at myself. I don’t apply makeup. I don’t put on jewelry. I don’t shuffle around in various poses to assess my daily outfit. Every few weeks I catch a glance at my face in the mirror and pluck some hair from my brows and chin and make a mental note of how close or far away I aim from needing to cover my roots with a box of dye. It’s not that I’m avoiding the mirror; it’s just far from the center of my gaze, and that’s always been the case.

I asked the orthodontist if there were any medical reasons why teeth needed to be aligned, and she said it was important for teeth to be in the right position as you get older, that decay, gum disease and pain often mounted if they weren’t. And plus, she said, “Appearance isn’t just about appearance. It enhances self-esteem, which then contributes to your overall mental health, which then contributes to your overall physical health.”

Nice sell, am I right? I mean, it was true that my appearance was starting to weigh on me. The gap between my front teeth, it wasn’t just widening, the teeth were beginning to tilt ever so slightly, but increasingly outward, and in different directions, like you sometimes see in walruses.

I asked the orthodontist if there were any medical reasons why teeth needed to be aligned, and she said it was important for teeth to be in the right position as you get older, that decay, gum disease and pain often mounted if they weren’t. And plus, she said, “Appearance isn’t just about appearance. It enhances self-esteem, which then contributes to your overall mental health, which then contributes to your overall physical health.”

Weird teeth can trigger an unsettling psychological cue: Don’t trust. I know this not because anyone shared with me that my teeth unsettled them but because I have been guilty of this bias myself. It’s a superficial and shaming way to see human beings, and it’s one of many forces that can put people who are struggling financially at a disadvantage in social and professional situations.

Increasingly, I noticed that I didn’t want to smile when other people were around, and certainly not when photos would be taken. And it was taking a toll, because smiling is bonding, smiling is belonging, smiling is an expression of joy and survival in a world gone mad and it makes the places where I dwell — my kids’ elementary school, my neighborhood, my workplace — feel more wholesome and harmonious.

And so currently I am on week 25 of what will likely be a 75-week commitment. Ten of my teeth are covered in little invisible attachments which cling to the plastic retainers I snap in and out and replace on a weekly basis. It’s like wearing a heavy raincoat, but in my mouth. I’m supposed to keep the retainers in for 20-22 hours a day. They’re not terribly uncomfortable, but they’re not exactly comfortable, either. On the first day or two wearing a new retainer, I get mild headaches from the pressure. By the end of the week, each retainer stinks, no matter how much I have brushed and cleaned it.

There is something nice about knowing that for most of the minutes in my day, I’m infinitesimally becoming more attractive and dentally sound. Sometimes I even catch myself thinking about how much more attractive I will feel in the future — a thought I haven’t had since I was 15 years old and a college student of my mother’s told me that I would peak in my 30s. But I cannot wait to have the attachments removed, to end the strange, awkward, stinky, and mildly painful routines of snapping the retainers in and out. I want my bite back.

There, there, I tell my teeth as they ache and struggle in the plastic prison I’ve committed them to. You will one day, once again, be lazy and liberated.