Have you ever seen those hubcaps that spin while a car is stopped at a light?

Well, here's another sign of our leisure society in decay. Removable gold covers for your teeth, also known as "grills." Kind of a like a shiny Cadillac grill for your mouth. Formerly the province of rappers and thugs, they're now increasingly popular with teenage girls. Naturally, the San Francisco Chronicle has an almost entirely upbeat report, which ends with a jokey dismissal of serious dental concerns.

No longer just for rappers and street toughs, gold teeth have gone to the girls....Today, grills are a multimillion-dollar business...While most dentists shudder at the thought of all that bacteria growing behind the bling, jewelers who make the teeth are counting their gold.

A resurgence of interest from females is a lifesaver for gold tooth "master" James Cho of JC Jewelry in Oakland, who had been considering moving out of the Bay Area to where the market is less saturated by gold teeth.

"At first, all my customers were young black men, and once they bought their teeth, they really don't need to buy more," he said. "Now, all kinds of people come in, college students from UC Berkeley, grandparents ... but lately I've been getting a lot of teenage girls -- of all races." Gold teeth are also peeking out of the mouths of the Hollywood mainstream: Movie star Johnny Depp wore gold teeth to the Oscars, and Madonna also gave it a try.

This IS Amurika, so of course, there are LOTS of options.....

The choices are endless: two, four, six teeth -- or the entire smile -- can be covered with one piece. The snap-on grills are sometimes solid, covering each tooth, or "open-face" with square cut-outs to expose the natural teeth. Fangs are popular, and so is the "iced out" look -- a grill encrusted in tiny diamonds. Customers can also etch words or symbols into their caps, and have asked for their initials, stars, their gang affiliation and even their cell phone numbers carved into their teeth.

Here's the big selling point: they're a "fad." Oh, and they're sexy.

Naisha Williams was one of the first girls to put gold in her mouth at Skyline High in Oakland. Grills no longer say ghetto, she said, and have become another teen fad like Air Jordan shoes or FUBU jackets. "Girls are getting grills just to have them like the boys," she said. So far, the guys are pleased. Errol Gaines, an eighth-grader at Frick Middle School in Oakland, is on his second set of gold teeth. "When I first got them, the girls said I was cute," he said. Now Gaines has the same compliment: "Grills make the girls look a little prettier."

The health risks are substantial.

..the trend isn't sitting pretty with dentists, who say grills can offset a person's bite and create a breeding ground for bacteria. "Teenagers aren't good about taking them out and cleaning them," said Oakland dentist Caroline Peterson. One 16-year-old patient took off his six-tooth grill in her chair and revealed four teeth ravaged by cavities....Gold teeth are at the top of her list of dental don'ts, but if teenagers insist, she advises them to treat grills as costume jewelry -- to be worn only for special, dress-up occasions. Never while sleeping, eating or as permanent fashion.

Yeah right, says 18-year-old Desire Richardson of Skyline High, whose gold teeth with diamonds and fangs are all part of her carefully crafted look: magenta braids, plastic dice hair beads, dangling orange triangle earrings and a white flower made of feathers behind her ear.

"Girls are not going to stop wearing gold teeth -- I see them wearing them more and more," she said, admiring the toothy display at JC Jewelry in Oakland. "Girls wear them in the park, shopping, at parties, in school, wherever. You get more attention when you wear them."

Turning heads was all part of Mika Castro's plan. When she goes to her senior prom on May 14, she also plans to carry a diamond-encrusted "pimp cup" goblet with her. A dressmaker is stitching her burgundy and gold dress.

"I always wanted to get gold teeth, so me and my friends decided prom would be a good reason to do it," she said. "It makes you stand out. I'm going to wear them after prom, too. I told my mom, and she just laughed."

Way to go, Mom! The biggest problem here isn't dental. It's the idea that individuality comes from conformist costuming.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at May 1, 2005 11:30 AM

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