Joe Dolce: Toothsome

Toothsome

Chaucer wrote of the gap-toothed wife of Bath,

suggesting lustful characteristics of the diastema.

Dents du Bonheur. Lucky teeth.

Soldiers in Napoleon’s army,

holding rifles with two hands,

required perfect incisors, for use

in opening powder magazines.

Gap-toothed men were classified unfit to fight.

Some broke theirs to avoid war.

The Passion gap, or Cape Flats smile.

South African fashion modification.

Fishermen removed the front ones

to whistle louder to one another.

Popular, for 1500 years, it brought

beliefs of improved oral sex and kissing.

Peer pressure, and gangsterism,

made it rite of passage for poor boys.

Ohaguro, blackened teeth.

Common in ancient Japan.

Women ingested dyes of oxided iron fillings,

soaked in tea or sake, harsh taste

abetted with cinnamon, cloves, anise.

Practiced amongst prostitutes, and geishas,

Ohaguro signified a woman’s sexual maturity.

Banned in 1870.

Joan Crawford’s molars were removed on both sides.

Sunken cheeks, known as the buckle—

slang arising from dentistry, buccal.

Infected gums, and swelling, stretched her smile,

leaving a larger upper lip (which she liked) so

she painted in the lower,

creating the Crawford mouth.

Joe Dolce