How Perfect Became Normal: Orthodontics and the Making of the Middle Class

Maxine Craig, University of California Davis

This paper contributes to the conference theme by examining the establishment of orthodontics as a routine part of middle-class childhood in the United States. How did the acquisition of a perfect smile become necessary for well-being? Writers have speculated about whether forms of cosmetic surgery and Botox will become social imperatives (Berkowitz 2017; Edmonds 2013; Talley 2012). They ask if a time will come when the public will accept these aesthetic medical technologies as routine self-care. For orthodontics, the transformation from novel technology to social imperative has already taken place. Examining how that came to be reveals how norms for appearance change, how appearance-altering technologies win acceptance as necessary medical care, how providing orthodontics for children became good parenting, and its absence perceived as neglect, and how the appearance of teeth became a distinguishing physical feature of wealth or poverty. Examination of the correspondence, case histories, and records of orthodontists, their organizations, and schools at the National Museum of American History, National Library of Medicine, and Smithsonian enabled me to identify the problem early orthodontists sought to solve and whom they imagined their patients would be. From the earliest days of orthodontic treatment, the distinction between functional and aesthetic improvement blurred, as orthodontists encouraged parents to bring their children in for treatment to prevent harms, both functional and psychological. Advice books and columns and parents’ magazines revealed how orthodontics were promoted and how the public responded. The paper traces orthodontics from its emergence as novel technology available to elites in the 1900s-1920s, its association with Hollywood glamour in the 1920s and 1930s, to its promotion to parents in the 1940s and 1950s as necessary care for children who, without it, would develop “inferiority complexes”.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 27. Oral Health and Hygiene