Re: I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...

Paul Dormer wrote:
In article <FKhOj.10979$yD2.4572@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
bosslady@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Jette) wrote:

Which one was Bernie Taupin talking about when he wrote "My sister
looks cute in her braces and boots, a handful of grease in her
hair"
in the song Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting?
Lady alone knows - he's kind of weird <g>

Probably the clothing item - he's describing a typical "bovva boot" gang girl.

Conversely, I remember hearing an American song on the radio in the
sixties - I think it was by Allan Sherman - referring to a girl wearing
braces, and wondered why she was wearing something men usually wear to
keep their trousers up.

American popular culture seems to suggest that teeth braces are a lot
more common in the US than they are in the UK. I don't recall seeing
anyone wearing them throughout my entire school career. However, I do
recall that my own dentist was thinking that maybe I might need a brace
on my upper teeth to straighten out a crooked front tooth, a
mis-alignment that had been made worse by an accident when I tried to
demonstrate a principle of mechanics using a garden spade.


yeah, in the UK up till fairly recently dentists would only consider braces for teeth for actual _problems_ such as badly misaligned teeth, whereas in the US fixing purely cosmetic problems seemed to be more accepted. Probably because in the UK our generation mostly got our dentistry on the NHS who weren't too concerned with our vanity, whereas in the US they have always had private dentists. When you're paying for it you might as well go the whole hog and have teeth that look as good as they work.

Mind you today's UK teens are as likely to be wearing braces as their US counterparts.

--
Jette Goldie
jette@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.jette.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/
http://wolfette.livejournal.com/
("reply to" is spamblocked - use the email addy in sig)
.

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