Aimee Lou Wood’s Teeth and the Never - Ending Beauty Standard Machine

All teeth and …..

HBO

By now, you’ve probably read one of the countless articles about The White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood’s teeth. Maybe you’ve scrolled past a TikTok video analysing their "realness" or seen a tweet praising their “perfect imperfection.” The internet is drowning in commentary, and, we’re all talking about one thing: teeth.

At first glance, this seems like progress - a break from Hollywood’s obsession with gleaming, uniform veneers. Here is a woman on a hit TV show whose teeth haven’t been filed into submission or arranged into an unnervingly symmetrical lineup. The celebration, in theory, feels refreshing. But scratch the surface, and the same exhausting pattern emerges. Even in championing Wood’s natural teeth, we’re simply replacing one beauty ideal with another. We’ve moved from "perfectly straight and blindingly white" to "perfectly imperfect." But what does that even mean? And do we really need a new standard at all?

In the 18th century, blackened, rotten teeth were a mark of status, only the wealthy could afford enough sugar to cause such decay. Queen Elizabeth I famously consumed so much sugar that her teeth turned black, prompting the elite to mimic the look by artificially staining their own. Fast-forward to the 20th century, and dental perfection became synonymous with wealth, health, and desirability. Hollywood reinforced this with its obsession with teeth - think of the dazzlingly straight smiles of Julia Roberts or Tom Cruise (whose famously misaligned teeth were corrected mid-career). The 2010s saw the rise of the Hollywood veneer, with influencers and celebrities jetting off to Turkey for “Turkey Teeth”, hyper-white, hyper-symmetrical porcelain caps that often required aggressive shaving down of natural teeth (I wouldn’t recommend watching videos of this process, you can’t un-see what you’ve seen) Then came the backlash: suddenly, the artificial veneer look was "out," and "natural teeth" were "in."

Side note, the process of getting veneers should be enough to put anyone off right? They literally shave your teeth down to nothing and the whole process is irreversible, so you’re stuck with these miniature sticks.

Today, we have Aimee Lou Wood. With her unveneered, slightly uneven teeth, and infamous gap, she has inadvertently become the poster girl for the next phase of dental beauty. But this isn’t a revolution. It’s just another cycle where we latch onto a new version of "perfection" and declare it the new gold standard. It’s still a standard. Or if not a standard yet because perfection will always be in. But can big media just take a chill pill, and for once just give it a rest, we don’t need the internet to tell us how to look? How can teeth be in or out, it’s insane? There is also the question of whose teeth are allowed to be quirky and cute?

Growing up, even here in England, the home of bad teeth, the ideals were clear. I went through two rounds of braces, and my teeth are still not straight. For years, I would hide my teeth, always posing with my mouth firmly shut or using my hands as shield when I smile to cover my teeth, so I know a thing or two about teeth insecurity. In England, the Global UK Dental Services Market, is set for substantial growth and is projected to reach USD 48.83 billion by 2032.

Now, the goalposts are shifting again - or at least, the media is trying to shift them. Are we entering the era of the “perfectly imperfect” smile? One that is natural but not too natural, quirky but still conventionally attractive, unique but in a way that photographs well? And just like that, a new kind of unattainable ideal is born.

There is something surreal about the sheer volume of discourse surrounding Wood’s teeth. She is an actor and yet, here we are, turning her mouth into a cultural talking point, analysing every angle as though it holds some deeper meaning. The irony is that in trying to embrace so-called “real” teeth, we are still obsessing over them. The message remains the same: our teeth are something to be scrutinised, discussed, and ultimately, measured against an arbitrary scale of desirability.

I also get it, it’s important to have this “representation” on the big screen, it’s a welcome break from the perfect cookie cut replicas we consistently see. But it’s still all so strange, all the think pieces, and commentary, it’s teeth and Aimee’s teeth are not groundbreaking, great but not groundbreaking, so why all the noise?

What if we didn’t? What if we let people exist without their dental structure becoming a topic of national conversation? What if The White Lotus was just a TV show, and Wood was appreciated for her performance rather than her enamel alignment?

Because here’s the thing: no matter how much the beauty standard shifts, it’s still a standard. And the most radical thing we can do is refuse to engage.

The irony of me engaging in this discussion to call out the standard is not lost on me.

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