Can love and braces live together happily ever after?
Would Romeo still have gone gaga for Juliet, if she’d been sporting brackets and wires? What if it was Romeo flashing a mouthful of metal at his star-crossed love?
It’s unlikely Shakespeare would have had to have rewritten a word of his play, if Romeo, or Juliet, or BOTH of them had been wearing braces. Despite the fears of many patients, orthodontic treatment is no obstacle to love. Guys in braces propose successfully to girls. Girls in braces get the guy on a regular basis. And despite the enduring urban legend, kissing couples rarely, if ever, wind up with their braces stuck together. Kissing in general, seems to be a non-issue for most couples – the prevailing advice seems to be to go slow, particularly if both parties are wearing braces.
Yes, love conquers all, including the fear that wearing braces will make a person less attractive to the opposite sex. In one study, subjects studied photos of braces-wearers and rated their attractiveness. Another group rated the same photos with the braces photo-shopped out. In almost every case, the scores were the same for both groups.
The problem is that people wearing braces don’t always perceive themselves as being attractive, and that can affect their confidence when venturing out into the dating pool. Rest assured that a confident smile is a beautiful thing with or without braces, and jump in the pool with the rest of the kids.
And if none of the above has convinced that brace were not invented to destroy your love life, remember this – our own Dr. Vic woo’d and won his wife Jennifer while wearing braces! Jennifer remembers, “I thought he was cute.”
So, if you think braces are going to cramp your romantic style, rest assured, you can have straight teeth, a healthy bite, and a fabulous love life!
