Mind The Gap: A Short Essay

" Man you can kick a field goal through that thing!" The one phrase I heard a million times a day growing up as a kid. Every kid has something they were picked on about but for me being a tall, gap toothed, chubby kid was the worse. Of course people made fun of those things about me as children are little demons..er..angels, but nothing bothered me more than someone talking about my the gap in my front teeth. 

My mother, also gapped tooth, always talked to me about how beautiful this trait was and to embrace it but as a child going into that awkward phase of puberty, it was nothing but a curse. I tried everything to get my gap to close, including putting putting a rubber band around my front teeth in hopes it would eventually close. I was down right obsessive about it, locking myself into the bathroom so I could stick some tissue between my gap to see what I looked like "normal". I vowed that as soon as I had the chance I would fill my gap, but something in me never did it. 

 Growing up having  gap never hindered me in any way in fact by the time I reached high school no one even pointed it out anymore. Even with people not seeming to take notice of it, I wasn't completely confident with my teeth. I did everything I could not to smile too much or when I laughed I would cover my mouth. All of that changed when a classmate asked me directly why I always hid my smile. Me being awkward as it is was a little shocked and even more self conscious if the fact that they even asked me such a question. I just shrugged and hoped they would change the subject, but they didn't. " You shouldn't hide your face your you're pretty" he said to me. He said it with boyish innocence, not meaning it in anyway except for its value, he wasn't trying to make a move, he was just saying what he thought.  I thought long and hard about it and I asked myself why the heck was I trying to hide this part of myself? Why should anyone including myself even care that I have a gap?That's when I realized that having a gapped tooth smile wasn't such a bad thing after all and that I should do what my mother had always told me to do, embrace it. 

Now that I am an adult I have accepted my gap as apart of me and I think its beautiful. I honestly don't know what I would do if I had gotten it filled. I would feel..well like everyone else and the artist in me never wants to do or be a part of the norm. Maybe this is one of the reasons why I love fashion so much. Fashion is the one place where being a tall woman with non Barbie like features is completely OK and it is considered beautiful to be have a quirky feature. Models like Georgia Jagger, Jess Hart, Lara Stone, and of course the original gapped tooth super model Lauren Hutton, have just verified the fact that gaps are damn sexy. So to all of the girls and women out there that feel a little self conscious about the space between your teeth, smile because you're absolutely beautiful  just the way you are. Respect the gap.  

Photo from: Examiner.com