But British people know there's more to acting than looking good. What if your character has bad teeth? Look at how everyone made fun of Nicole Kidman's prosthetic nose. The thing lots of Americans sometimes fail to realise is looking like a sex kitten does not equate to being a good actor. You have to be believable, and to do that you have to be fundamentally flawed in some way. No one likes a Mary Sue with perfect dentures!

(maybe I'm just being defensive because my front two teeth overlap slightly and I haven't had that fixed. And very very very white teeth that are excessively bright scare me.)

But Nicole could take off her prosthetic nose at the end of the day! (And really, our dear Nicole does not have problems related to "too few cosmetic procedures" ... indeed, rather the opposite sometimes. Though I heart her anyway for being pale like what.)

But having straight teeth isn't the same as looking like a sex kitten! Plenty of highly unattractive people still have straight white teeth. It's just... I don't know, having straight white teeth by the time you're 16 is just something I'd always taken for granted. It's like shoes. Most people think, yeah, if you're going someplace, you put on shoes. And it's just normal. But there's this guy at my school who NEVER wears shoes and people are always TOTALLY SHOCKED. Because it's part of our culture to wear shoes when you're walking around outside and in public. And I apparently thought straight white teeth were like shoes in that way. It's less to do, I suppose, with them being ACTORS than it is with me just not really having ever seen people with weird teeth past whatever age it is people get braces.

And I'm pretty sure what you're describing with your teeth is not what I'm talking about. Like, Gwen from Torchwood has this epic gap between her front teeth that doesn't bother me, but there are other people where it looks like their mouths got BOMBED or something. And I agree that EXCESSIVELY WHITE teeth are scary... my dentist says they should be the same color as the whites of your eyeballs, so that's always been my guide.

And I understand being defensive about teeth... when I was in elementary school I got made fun of for not having teeth as perfect as everyone else's, and I'm pretty sure it's why I ended up so militant about all teeth needing to be straight and perfect.

*hides behind Mohinder*

I'll come out when you stop yelling at me please :(

And I understand being defensive about teeth... when I was in elementary school I got made fun of for not having teeth as perfect as everyone else's, and I'm pretty sure it's why I ended up so militant about all teeth needing to be straight and perfect.

I suppose that makes sense. Gwen's teeth in Torchwood bother me, I'll be honest. It's just not in their culture to visit the dentist like it is over there. Even down here, there's a dentist in every public school and some people still don't fix their teeth.

(for the record I never got the - very hard to notice - overlap fixed because we moved around many countries when I was that age and my mom couldn't be bothered finding a good orthodontist all the time.)