Japanese Snaggletooth Trend: Women Purposely Ruining Their Teeth- For Beauty?

Women around the world strive for beauty, spending billions on cosmetics, fashion, weight loss and cosmetic surgery. We all think of the idea of a perfect woman as one with doll-like features, large breasts, a small waist, large doe eyes, full lips, volumous hair and a perfect, straight, white, million-dollar smile. 

However, a recent trend in Japan blows our affirmations out of the water: Women are now undergoing cosmetic surgery to OBTAIN crooked teeth, called "tseuke-yaeba", rather than fix them. While in the United States, girls and women alike strive for sexiness, females in Japan are obsessed with "cuteness." In fact, a Japanese pop-group called Tseuke-Yaeba 48, created by Dental expert Taro Masuoka, has been profitting off the first-grade/ pre-braces craze. In fact, dental surgeons are even offering half-off deals to middle and high-school girls to obtain the $400 surgery.

So what is so appealing about crooked teeth?


"The gapped tooth is sort of preorthodontic or early development, and the naturally occurring yaeba is because of delayed baby teeth or a mouth that's too small," Pace University's Dr. Emilie Zaslow told The New York Times, adding, "It's this kind of emphasis on youth and the sexualization of young girls."

Japanese women prefer looking "endearably attractive" by wearing school-girl outfits, pig-tails and everything pink, illustrating the reason behind Hello Kitty's popularity. Has anyone ever noticed that small, naive, child-like and harmless Hello Kitty has no mouth? Is this a continuation of the submissiveness of women prevalent in Japanese culture, dating back to the Geishas?

The Japanese snaggletooth trend is debatably due to the fall of the Japanese economy- since they are facing an economic turn-down and a shift of gender roles, many men miss the power they had over women, making little, helpless girls seem more appealing. Women, in return, are trying to make themselves appear more "girl-like" to appear desirable to these men. Are Japanese men becoming so insecure about their financial situations that they feel intimated by the power of a woman, who will not look up at him with awe like a child? The economy is more entwined with our perception of beauty then we think. 

"Historically, the rise of cuteness is traced back to the 1970s, with the popularization of cute handwriting and manga and disillusionment with earlier student riots and subsequent capitalization of those trends by the fancy goods industry (Kinsella, 1995:225). Though the general meaning of the word is “cute,” the qualities and connotations associated with the term are many. As Kinsella writes, a survey among men and women in 1992 revealed a number of other terms associated with kawaii, including: childlike, innocent, naïve, unconscious, natural, emotional contact between individuals, fashionable, associated with animals, and weak (1995:237-240). Kawaii is a produced style and aesthetic as well as an inherent quality a person, place, or thing possesses."

The rise of cuteness dated back to the 1970's, where men became attracted to qualites like innocent, naivem natural, unconscious and weak, according to a 1995 study by the trends of fancy goods industry. (Kinsella, 1995:225). 

The "tseuke-yaeba" Snaggletooth trend is undeniably related to society. Japanese women do not want "too perfect" American teeth, which may intimidate men during the weak economy. Could this trend blow-up in the United States as well during our recession? Many magazines show models with gap-teeth, who possses an innocent, child-like gaze. However, many argue that this rise of girl-hood in fact empower women to embrace their true selves.

"Kitty is a paradigm of the preadolescent female self, before young women are forced to internalize the images of what society promotes as necessary to become beautiful or appealing: uncomfortable shoes, control-top pantyhose, a cow-like Nancy Reagan gaze, and those two twin demons—silicone and StairMasters. Kitty is eternally uncorruptible. She doesn’t want to please anyone except herself. [. . .] A fellow Kittyphile suggests that Kitty, with her immaculate whiteness, is the embodiment of pure innocence” (Hanks, 1999).

Does this trend empower women to embrace their imperfections, or does it add to the long list of characteristics women must have to remain attractive to men? Is this another example of the continuation of women changing themselves to cater to men's desire for power and control? Comment your opinion!

Read the entire Snaggletooth Craze Spawns Dental Procedures article here.