My front teeth are so gappy I can fit a 2p through them. They made me feel poor and ugly. I looked into radical solutions – then had a big realisation

My teeth are what you may call an acquired taste. Between each of my incisors, there’s a gap large enough to fit a two-pence piece.

‘You’ve got teeth like a picket fence,’ someone once said online. And, more unkindly, another stranger looked at my Instagram profile pic and commented: ‘Her teeth are so ugly that if she smiled at me, I’d run screaming in the opposite direction.’

I brushed these remarks off, but they stung.

I can only imagine what The White Lotus’s gap-toothed star, Aimee Lou Wood, has had to put up while forging a successful acting career.

She’s held her nerve against the pressure of Hollywood and learnt to love her ‘rebellious’ teeth, saying this month: ‘I spent a lot of my life worrying about being weird, and now I’m realising it could be my superpower.’ The 31-year-old is certainly far more memorable than her conventionally beautiful co-stars.

When I was a child, my family used to call my teeth the ‘Freeman tombstones’. A ‘gift’ from my grandfather, everyone on my dad’s side had them: me, my brother, my dad, aunt, niece and nephew.

Indeed, tooth gaps, or diastema (the medical term), are believed to be caused by a dominant gene.

They occur if you have a large jaw bone, and teeth too small to fit it, and 25 per cent of the population are thought to be affected.

The White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood has learned to love her ‘rebellious’ teeth

George Bernard Shaw famously said the US and ourselves were two nations ‘separated by a common language’. In truth, it was dentistry. In America, the ‘Hollywood smile’ – with perfect, even, white, straight teeth – is ubiquitous. Here, we were known for having teeth that were uneven, misaligned and grey.

Flashing a set of perfect teeth is now a status symbol, a sign you have the means to invest in some gnashers to go with your designer clothes. While Invisalign (invisible) braces will set you back up to £5,000, a set of veneers costs anywhere between £8,400 and £21,000. Those who aren’t quite so well off can opt for ‘Turkey teeth’, travelling abroad for cut-price treatment. Having perfect teeth is something that those of us on a normal wage simply can’t afford.

At 13, I made every teenager’s rite-of-passage trip to the orthodontist, where I was told I didn’t need braces for dental reasons, but could have them for aesthetic ones. My gaps were, if anything, beneficial to my oral health because nothing got stuck in them. Hey, I could even floss with my tongue. The thought of wearing metal train-tracks for a year was distinctly unappealing. I happily turned down the offer.

Then in my late 30s (I’m now 53) I became more self-conscious. That Hollywood smile aesthetic was seemingly everywhere. Perhaps my teeth had also shifted a little, making the gaps more noticeable, or weren’t as white as in my youth.

Also, as a journalist, I saw many more pictures of myself than before. I fixated on my teeth, worrying that they could even be holding me back professionally. Did they make me look ugly? Poor and ungroomed?

Sometimes, I felt so insecure I would smile with my mouth closed, which both looked and felt unnatural. I asked about veneers. ‘I wouldn’t recommend you do it,’ a specialist dentist told me.

‘Veneers will give you very large-looking teeth and having gaps actually makes you look younger.’

Why would I go through the discomfort and expense of veneers to make myself appear older? Also, having them fitted involves drilling down your teeth (which can go wrong), plus they don’t last for ever, meaning expensive replacements in the future.

Hilary Freeman says she will be keeping – and celebrating – her not-so-perfect teeth

Aimee Lou Wood in a scene from season three of The White Lotus

A few years ago, I looked into Invisalign, which seemed like real progress from the train-track braces of yore. But by that time I had a young daughter (who incidentally, hasn’t inherited my gappy teeth) and I didn’t want her growing up believing any features society deems ‘imperfect’ need to be changed.

Which is why I’ve learned to love my teeth. Sure, they aren’t seen as ‘classically beautiful’, but then neither are most of my features.

My nose is too big, my hair too frizzy, my brows not high enough. If I start by fixing my teeth, where will I end up? As a Kardashian? I like having a characterful, unique face. And besides, the French love gap-toothed smiles, calling them ‘the teeth of luck’. My French partner likes my ‘cheeky smile’, and no other boyfriend ever had a problem with my teeth either.

In Ghana and Nigeria, diastema symbolise fertility and are seen as beautiful. At school, I studied Chaucer and was tickled to learn that gappy teeth – as exemplified by the Wife of Bath – were associated with being lusty.

Now, when I smile my gappy smile, I am reminded of my lovely dad, who died last summer, and his genetic legacy. I wouldn’t want to change that. So, like Aimee, I’ll be keeping – and celebrating – my not-so-perfect teeth.

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