Celebrities are damaging their teeth for a “perfect smile,” but it’s coming back to haunt them

September 20, 2023

If you’ve been on Instagram at all in the past year or so, you might have noticed that everyone—okay, maybe not everyone, but a ton of celebrities and influencers, and an ever-growing number of everyday people—has an eerily perfect, filter-like smile, reports Futurism.

Veneers, as The Washington Post first disclosed on Sunday, September 14, are the latest craze to stem from the Instagram Face phenomenon that permeates today’s beauty standards.

But, according to WaPo’s reporting, the cost of undergoing the dental procedure may be darker than hopeful buyers realize.: The process of getting veneers is arduous, expensive, and most importantly, permanent: dentists have to shave down the patients’ protective enamel to make room for the custom-made dental shells—a process that makes the nerves inside teeth vulnerable to damage and infection. And because we can’t simply grow our enamel back, veneers are thus required to protect those nerves forever.

“I was seeing so many people getting, in my opinion, unnecessary dental work or dental work that was damaging their own teeth,” Sara Hahn, a Harvard School of Dental Medicine graduate who specializes in cosmetic dentistry, recently told the WaPo—recounting the concerning rise in veneer-seeking patients coming through her practice’s doors. “There was this idealization of veneers, or this perfect Hollywood smile.”

To be clear, veneers do have a legitimate place in dentistry. Teeth are often damaged in accidents or other oral trauma, while folks with naturally large spaces between teeth might seek veneers to curb the threat of excessive decay. For the most part, though, the growing demand for veneers has been driven by aesthetics alone.

Growing increasingly unsettled by the number of people suddenly seeking the procedure—especially by those who already had “perfectly good teeth,” as the dentist told WaPo — Hahn started a TikTok account, @veneercheck, where she posts speculatory videos regarding celebrity veneer work.

By close-reading the probably-fake teeth of stars like Selena Gomez, Dua Lipa, and Aaron Paul, among many others, says Hahn, she hopes that she can help young people understand how few celebrities still have their God-given chompers.

“As a dentist, you know that having all the money in the world can’t reproduce your good, natural, healthy tooth structure,” Hahn says. “I wanted to share that it came with a cost.”

Indeed, that cost is quite high. Beyond the fact that veneers are forever, nerve damage connected to these procedures can ultimately render a tooth dead, thus requiring the dreaded root canal, a painful procedure that comes with its own list of cons. These risks are always present—but are heightened when tooth-seekers travel to places like Turkey to get cosmetic procedures on the cheap. What’s more, Hahn says, every time veneers get redone—which they’ll have to be, as a set only lasts for about 15 years or so—a dentist has to once again “refine what’s underneath, so you’re taking away a little more tooth each time.”

“We’re talking about a finite quantity of material,” according to Hahn. “At some point, the tooth is just not going to be strong enough to hold whatever you want to put on top of it. It will snap.”

That’s a seriously grim ghost of dental future, especially, again, for an unnecessary procedure. Oh, and did we mention that a full mouth of veneers can cost $100,000?

“If I knew now what I know about veneers I don’t think I would have gotten them,” an influencer named Chelsea Smith said in a TikTok video published late last year— revealing that one of her veneers had popped off while eating a bowl of ramen. “All my friends and family know that I have had such an ordeal with these veneers.”

“I’m ready, at this point, like take them all out and give me some dentures,” the influencer added. “Let me live my life.”

There’s no denying that beauty trends are pervasive, and it’s difficult not to fall into that trap of increasingly inhuman standards of perfection. Before you let a dentist shave down your teeth, however, you might want to ask yourself exactly how much attaining that ever-shifting ideal is really worth—and if the cost of veneers might ultimately be too high.

Research contact: @futurism

August 19, 2024

“Redshirting”—or choosing to delay school entry for a year—seems to be an increasingly popular trend among parents who are trying to give their children a competitive advantage, reports Yahoo Lifestyle.

The growing popularity of redshirting may have been started by Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book, Outliers, which was published in 2008. In this book, Gladwell claims that a child being relatively older than their peers provides an advantage.

Gladwell points to data showing that nearly all players for the Canadian Hockey League have birthdays in the first four months of the year. Because the cutoff for most sports in Canada is January 1, children born in the first four months of the year are older than the other children on the team—thus, making them more likely to be identified as talented and ultimately more likely to play professional hockey. Gladwell argues that this principle extends to children who are older than their classmates having an academic advantage as well.

Sincethis book was published, it seems that children are waiting longer and longer to start kindergarten every year. At the same time, kindergarten seems to be becoming increasingly academic and rigorous.

For parents of children born near the cutoff date, the pressure to delay kindergarten feels intense. So does research actually find that redshirting will provide an academic and/or social advantage for children? The answer may be more complicated than you think.

The research on redshirting

Research on redshirting suggests that it is associated with a small academic advantage (that is, higher academic test scores) and test scores that seem to increase at a greater rate in the first and second grades (suggesting that redshirted children are showing enhanced learning in these grades).

However, this effect may begin to fade as early as the end of first grade. This research is also correlational—meaning we do not know whether it is redshirting that causes these advantages or if redshirting is simply associated with advantages. The latter would not be surprising since parents that choose to redshirt their children are often very different from the parents who do not—most notably, they are often higher income families.

Some research studies eliminate the problem of parent choice by looking at the impact of children’s age within the same grade (such as comparing students with summer birthdays to students in the same grade with fall birthdays). Research finds that students who are relatively older than other children in their grade score higher on math and science tests and, although these differences decrease over the years, they are still present to some extent in eighth grade.

Other research finds that children who are relatively older show less hyperactivity and inattention and greater educational attainment (translation: getting farther in school). However, the impact on educational attainment is greatly reduced when schools do not engage in early tracking (translation: sending children to different schools based on academic abilities in elementary school).

Research also shows that children who are older relative to their classmates are more likely to be in gifted education and less likely to be in special education. These positive impacts seem to extend to high school and beyond.

Children who are older relative to their classmates are also less likely to drop out of high school, less likely to commit a felony, and less likely to experience a teenage pregnancy. Children who are older than their classmates also are more likely to attend a four-year college than younger students.

Yet, it is very important to note that this line of research only involves associations (meaning, we do not know whether being older relative to your peers actually causes any of these positive or negative outcomes). Further research is needed in order to conclude that redshirting actually causes any of these positive outcomes.

Are there any situations in which parents may want to avoid redshirting?

So, research suggests that being older than your peers is consistently associated with at least a small advantage—but are there any situations in which parents might want to avoid redshirting?

Research suggests that when your child has an identified disability, a suspected disability—or even if you are just concerned that they may need some extra help in school—you may want to avoid redshirting. In this case, delaying school entry may be associated with worse academic performance, because it would also involve delaying free essential services through the public school system (such as speech therapy and learning support).

This short delay may have a big impact as research finds that services before age five are more effective in improving a child’s long-term outcome than services after age five.

Research has compared the impact of redshirting on children with disabilities (such as autism, developmental delays, learning disabilities, or health impairments) versus children without disabilities. Researchers found that children with disabilities who were redshirted scored significantly lower in math in third grade when compared to children with disabilities who were not redshirted, while children without disabilities who were redshirted showed improved math and reading scores in third grade. Research also finds a negative impact of redshirting for children with more severe ADHD and no impact for children with learning disabilities.

Is redshirting more important for boys than girls?

In any discussion of redshirting, it is commonly assumed that boys in particular benefit from redshirting. In line with this assumption, research reveals that boys are indeed more likely to be redshirted than girls. So is there any research to back up this trend?

Research does find that girls are more likely to be ready for kindergarten than boys and that this difference is mostly driven by differences in social-emotional development.

Research also suggests that boys seem to show greater gains from redshirting and that boys may not cope as well as girls with having higher-achieving classmates.

Research contact: @yahoolifestyle0