Teeth

I don’t like my teeth. I’ve never liked my teeth. The front ones are too big at the top and too small at the bottom. They crowd my mouth and overlap in unattractive ways. They’re just a bit of a mess.

It’s my own fault too. In my early teens the orthodontist gave me a heavy-duty set of dental braces and told me to wear them every night. I knew that it was a precursor to having a daytime set and – scared of being bullied at school – stubbornly refused to play ball. I ‘lost’ the braces somewhere in my room. I skipped orthodontic appointments.

Perhaps assuming I’d come round to the idea further down the line, my parents shrugged their shoulders and left me to it. They’re not instinctively authoritarian anyway, and by that point I think they’d realised that when it comes to stuff like that I really am the proverbial horse, digging its heels in on the edge of the water.

When I hit adulthood, my mouth was just one of a laundry list of things I disliked about my body. Acne – face, back and chest. Skinny arms. Pasty skin. Small cock. Mercifully I’d grown about six inches between 16 and 17, so was no longer one of the shortest kids in my year, but in most other respects I disliked what I saw when I looked in the mirror.

And I adjusted my behaviour accordingly – sometimes consciously, but more often just as a reflexive response to my own body image. I kept my mouth shut in photos. I tried not to smile too much full stop, because that often meant forgetting myself mid-grin and showing a full row of snaggly, off-white gnashers. For a while in my early 20s I dreaded kissing new people, in case my big front teeth bumped against theirs and made them pull away in disgust.

I think about them far less these days – I guess you could say I’ve made my peace with the situation – but I still keep my mouth closed when I pose for photos and I still don’t like seeing them in the mirror. They’re one of a dozen tiny anchors on my self-esteem; they may nag rather than sting, but they still weigh me down.

When I looked through the images HappyComeLucky took for my Sinful Sunday post this week, I mentally discarded the one where I’m smiling with my mouth open, without even really thinking about why I’d done so. That’s just what my brain is used to doing. Then I showed the whole set to Livvy and it was the first one she picked out. “I love this one,” she said. “I love how you look so happy.”

It’s funny how easily a genuine compliment – or unfiltered validation – from someone you love can push past the knots of insecurity and self-doubt that build up over the years. Left to my own devices I’d have quietly left that photo sitting in my inbox, and just used the second image. Or I’d have cropped my mouth out of it, in the process losing any sense or hint of the joy I felt at that moment.

As it was, I pulled on my big boy pants and trusted her enthusiasm – and I’m really glad I did so. Taking that mini leap of faith didn’t make me like my teeth any more, but the response I’ve had to the post since then has made me reassess the way I deal with my feelings about them. For that, I’m profoundly grateful.