Gap Year
On Permanent Decisions, Marketability & Lucky Teeth
Tyra: So Danielle, you went to the dentist but you refused to have your gap closed.
Do you really think you can have a cover girl contract with a gap in your mouth?
Danielle: Yes why not?
Tyra: This is all people see. Its easy breezy beautiful cover girl! Its not marketable!
Danielle: I don’t want to completely close it.
Miss J: Well I guess you just left a gap wide open for another girl baby!
Tyra: I agree
Later…..
Tyra: If I decide to keep you are you going to get your gap done?
Danielle (reflecting in 2024): Thats when I was like, so what your saying is, if I don’t get my gap closed, you’re going to send me home?
Tyra: Gonna get those teeth done?
Danielle: All the way.
Tyra: I think all the way.
Danielle (reflecting in 2024): So I decided to play the game, and I got my gap closed.
Later…..
Contestant (name unknown - reflecting in 2024): The irony is that a few seasons later, Tyra was like we love your teeth, we’re gonna widen that gap!
Cut to:
Tyra: We’d love to exagerrate that and take you a little more to Lauren Hutton!
Contestant with tiny gap: Take it as big as you want it!
(from Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model docuseries)
A little more to Lauren Hutton. Let’s think on that a minute. There was a time when Lauren Hutton was possibly the only famously beautiful gap toothed face that was widely photographed and appreciated. But it wasn’t until 1970, when she decided, fuck it, and stopped plugging her gap with mortician’s wax when she turned up to modelling shoots.
“I had already invented a little piece of very soft wax. It was called mortician’s wax, and I could make a little bead out of that and stick it between my two front teeth and then take a butter knife and make a line,” Lauren told Vogue recently. According to the interview, Eileen Ford made her promise to save her money to have her nose fixed and teeth capped when she was first signed to Ford Models. She agreed, but never did.
The French call gap toothed smiles dents du bonheur or “lucky teeth”. I always rather liked my lucky teeth ( and the lucky apple in my eye). I could stick a 20c piece between them, and my tongue. It was a good party trick.
I was invited to audition for the lead in a film when I was sixteen. My dentist had recently offered to fashion me a little temporary ‘plug’ that I could slide in-between my gapped front teeth in the same way, to see if I might want to consider getting veneers to fix my smile. I thought it was probably a good idea to wear it when I turned up to audition, that I’d look less weird. I was getting on great with the actors that were already cast and all was going swimmingly, when they suggested we take a short break and then come back to try another scene. I thought that would be a great time to shovel in a quick snack, and took a big bite into an apple. The temporary gap fixer broke, and was left sticking out of the apple flesh. Everyone looked at me aghast, then we all laughed. I continued with my natural teeth and ended up getting the part. I found an agent after being cast. When the film was over, they asked me into the agency, sat me down and told me I had to get my teeth fixed. That the film was a lucky ‘one off’ but that gap teeth would limit my chances of success so greatly there was little point in even trying. I declined, and changed representation soon after.
Years later, I met a dentist who offered to ‘fix my smile’ in a very natural way, at a reduced rate, and I happily agreed. I got veneers on my top four teeth, an incredibly painful and torturous process, that I didn’t relaise before deciding on involved filing my own natural teeth way back to a point of no turning back. There was only very minimal pain relief to keep the costs down, and I sometimes wonder if he was a bit of a sadist - I recall lying there with tears pouring down my face. He insisted on filling in my gap, despite me insisting I didn’t want it done. ‘Just let me try it’ he would say over and over, and then ‘I’ll put the gap back if you really want it’. I hated it. I looked totally weird to myself. He made me keep the filled in teeth for twenty four hours, to really have a chance to think it over. I returned and begged for my gap back. He unwillingly agreed, but it is now smaller than it was - although I can still stick my tongue in it, a twenty cent coin won’t fit. I’m used to it now, but sometimes I wish it was back the way it originally was.
The history of women changing their teeth, their faces, their hair and body parts to win the admiration of film producers, agents and directors is as old as time.
According to Old Hollywood folklore, Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford both had back molars removed to get that cut glass high hollow cheekbone look. Rita Hayworth endured years of painful early electrolysis to give her a higher hairline. Suffering for your art/career/beauty is part of the parcel we sign up for. But its always been the game changers that refuse to conform that give the rest of us the confidence to like ourselves as we are when the world seems to be saying we aren’t quite right. I’m grateful to have admired Brigitte Bardot’s slight gap and Lauren Hutton’s wider one when I was younger, to give me faces that affirmed there was nothing wrong with mine, or indeed, that I was lucky in the teeth.
I’ve always found it weird to break people down into body parts, but in the spirit of this discussion I think its fair to mention that the pure sunshine smiles of Anna Paquin, Aimee Lou Wood, Eddie Murphy, Vanessa Paradis, Uzo Aduba, Billy Preston, Willem Dafoe and Amy Winehouse have probably helped the cause in more recent times. Dafoe even starred in a short film called Mind The Gap’, where he states ‘I have gaps, I have gaps in my teeth. People have suggested that I fix them, but I like my gaps.
As reported in a Celebrity Fix article from only fourteen years ago that went with the photo heading ‘Johnny Depp's ex is perfectly happy with her dodgy dentistry’, Vanessa Paradis told Harpers Bazaar ‘Why would I fix them? I was born with them. I can spit water through them. They're useful!’.
A quick internet search has revealed that in many West African cultures, ‘a gap between the front teeth is considered highly attractive and a sign of beauty, fertility, and prosperity’, with some people even having cosmetic dentistry to create an artificial gap. In the Caribbean, its known as the 'Passion Gap’ or the ‘Cape Flats Smile’ and is ‘associated with sexual allure, or, in some contexts, as a practical modification for whistling’. In Medieval Europe, a gap-toothed woman was considered ‘lusty’ or as having a wandering, flirtatious nature. Soldiers with gaps in Napoleonic times were considered unfit to fight as they couldn’t tear open gunpowder cartridges with their teeth. Some men destroyed their own teeth to be declared unfit.
It seems crazy now to imagine a person being put down and humiliated on television for the shape of their teeth, as happened with Danielle (now known just as Dani) on America’s Next Top Model, but watching the revisit reminded me how different and judgemental the times were in relation to a united front of boring beauty standards.
Tyra banks tried to explain what happened from her perspective; ‘I’ve actually apologized for the issue with Dani and what happened. That was between a rock and a hard place for me. There were agents that would tell me she will not work with those teeth, it’s just not going to happen. That’s what they told me. I could’ve just been quiet and let them handle it. Hindsight is 20/20 for all of us. It just so happens that a lot of the things that are 20/20 for me happened in front of the world.’
Dani’s response: ‘Bull f---ing s---’ .
Nigel Barker, the photographer for America’s Next Top Model said ‘I just thought she looked great with the gap between her teeth. And that perfection is boring’.
Time gaps. Perfection is always boring.
Honk if you love gaps. Heart this, or share, if you enjoyed reading Loose Connections and want to help a gal out. watch Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model if you dare.
Til next week,
Lo x
one of my first boyfriend’s dad was an orthodontist and told me i would be a lot prettier if i had my overbite fixed. i asked if he was offering to do it for free. I was a poor student from a single parent household so no way we could afford it. His face spread in a smug ruddy red cheeked alcoholic smile as he laughed in my face. Now as I age I see my receding chin and those words come back to haunt me. I wonder if invisalign will fix it. Should I do it now. These comments stay with you. These judgments!
I loved your gap when I first saw you on screen. Still do.
I endured orthodontic treatment as a teen in the old days of heavy metal braces around each tooth, wires and rubber bands.
It dented my confidence and was very painful.
My Mum pushed this so hard because as a child her gaps and crooked teeth were the cause of teasing and trauma. Her solution in the 1930s was for the dentist to remove all her teeth and have dentures .
I always thought she looked glam. But that teeth twisted trauma was so challenging.
Another great read.
😁