Casey Joe, a 26-year-old beauty influencer based in New Jersey, has always felt insecure about her teeth. He hated the gaps between them and the way one of her front teeth jutted out a bit in front of the other. “There were times when I was doing really big campaigns and a lot of the comments were about my teeth, like, insults and things like that. So it made me uncomfortable and really self-conscious.” told me.
Last January, Joe decided to get veneers. “A veneer is basically a covering that goes over the tooth, like an acrylic nail,” he explained. Dr. Kevin Sands, a Beverly Hills-based dentist serving an elite clientele. “If you’re just doing healthy teeth, you just have to remove a thin layer [the tooth], a few millimeters, like a contact lens.” He said. Patients typically wear temporary veneers once the teeth have been shaved until their permanent veneers come back from the lab, a process that can take a few weeks.
Joe checked out dentists in New York and Miami. He also thought of Dr Mario Alfonso Montoya Paz, a Colombia-based dentist who has created smiles for some of the world’s biggest stars, including Tekashi 69 and Rick Ross. But his prices were beyond her budget. In the end, she chose Dr. Omar Mezaa dentist in the Dominican Republic who charged a flat fee of $2,500 for 10 veneers on the top and bottom rows of her mouth, effectively $125 per tooth, which was much less expensive than US prices, which can range from $1,500 to $5,000 per tooth for porcelain veneers.
This time last year, Joe flew to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to have the procedure done. The dentist filed down some of her teeth, removing enough of the protective layer of enamel to make way for composite veneers (porcelain veneers are more natural-looking and therefore more expensive). In total, it took almost 12 hours – seven hours for the top row and about four hours for the bottom row. Although anesthesia is often used for this procedure, especially with porcelain veneers, Jo said she didn’t have any numbing medication, so there was some mild discomfort. And even though it took her a while to adjust to her new smile because her lips hurt from her mouth being open for so long, she was able to get on with her life the very next day. “It’s fun to be somewhere and meet someone new and say, ‘Wow, you have nice teeth,'” Joe told me. “These are compliments I have never heard before. It gives me extra confidence, a little boost to my ego.”
Ashley Strong, 28, an influencer based in Alaskashe got veneers last summer, documenting the whole ordeal on herself YouTube channel. Although she had no problem with her natural teeth, she was drawn to veneers because she is “an aesthetic person.” She wasn’t insecure about her smile, but she believed that having straighter and whiter teeth would only help her career. “There would be instances where I would edit [a YouTube video] and I didn’t giggle all the way through, even though I really want to[ed] show me feelings,” she said. “When you start to get a little bit more attention and a little bit more expectation on you, being able to smile slowly and confidently is so important.”
Our cultural fascination with perfect smiles has been growing steadily for years, and social media has only accelerated the interest. Dr Kourosh MaddahiBeverly Hills-based dentist who has performed dental work on celebrities such as music producer Timbaland and comedian Kathy Griffin, told me he thinks we’re experiencing a “second wave” of interest in cosmetic dentistry. The first wave, according to Maddahi, happened in the early 2000s, with adults in their forties and fifties getting veneers. He credited the revamped reality TV shows from that era as The swan and Extreme Makeover, the latter of which he consulted on, introducing veneers to a wider audience. Now, Maddahi told me, people as young as 18 are considering the procedure. “And the main reason for that is how they smiled on Instagram, how they looked on Instagram,” he said.
Scroll through Instagram, the place where flaws are easily erased with a filter, and you can quickly be fooled by a sea of pixel perfection. There is one trend, however, that stands out above all others on the platform, and that is the growing trend of perfectly straight, blindingly white teeth. Much like Instagram face, the Instagram Smile has now become ubiquitous. It’s not weird. Our growing reliance on social media has fostered an environment that “puts pressure on regular users to perform to the same standards as the famous and rich,” as he put it in 2019 Atlantic article about the popularity of dental veneers.
Sometimes, obsessing over straight white teeth can be dangerous, as evidenced by the stories of young people who pulled out their teeth in an effort for the perfect smile, and those who have traveled to other countries, such as Turkey, India, Thailand, and Mexico, to get the procedure done cheaply, sometimes leaving them with a worse smile than before. What is interesting to consider, however, is how we got here, as well as the wider implications of an aesthetic process that may seem a necessity because of its association with influence, beauty and wealth. “When you look perfect, it makes you look like you’re in a higher position,” Joe said. “Having a perfect white smile and bright teeth is like having the latest designer handbags these days.”
