Senses
I wake up in a blacked haze, my head is pounding and I was dead asleep until – wait- i didn’t brush my f***ing teeth!!! My mouth begins to feel ashy, and my teeth feel covered in slime. Sheer habit goads me grabs me and drags me up from my blank slumber, and i peel myself, like a person controlling a puppet, stumbling and with no thoughts to the bathroom.
I bend over the sink, give my drunken appearance and somewhat mournful but amusing wink, and turn the faucet on. Literally niagara fall is at my fingertips- I AM A GOD!!! But it gets louder so I turn it off in search for my teeth cleaning paraphernalia. First in a bumbling jumble of cosmetics and skincare products, i find it below a palette of eyeshadow, and the toothpaste somehow ended up in my shower caddy. Now is not the time for questions, it’s the time for answers.
Physical capacities
The inventor of the toothbrush was probably a person of absolute simplicity, and if we look beyond the screwups and finagling of modern technology- let’s make it go faster, you have to plug this one in! Literally a semi-intelligent monkey could use it, alternatively a non intelligent robot.
- Acquire toothbrush: this does require the use of a physical grabby mechanism, most people use their arms. Unfortunately, from this step we have marginalized paraplegics and those with muscular dystrophy or any other affliction that prevents the user from grasping the implement
- Put toothpaste on toothbrush: this particularly requires a level of motivation for me personally: some days i just do not feel like defiling my mouth with the frosty astringent minty chemical mess. But for those who have actual problems: those with parkinson’s or anything that prevents them from fine motor skills.
Gender
Looking at the Personal Health & Beauty aisle of the grocery store perplexes me. I stand in front of the stable little soldiers all in bright color with “enhancing” effects made to make me look like a normal person. But I am a simple women, and i have come for the bare minimum in terms of personal grooming. Already, my gender shames me.
Deep seated in between “X-TREME whitening” and the bubblegum flavored toothpaste i find it. Toothpaste For Men. It’s in a sleek navy tube, with a black cap. But in all other ways is seemingly identical to its twin just regular old toothpaste right next to it. The twin didn’t get the memo- it’s for men and men only. Why does toothpaste of all things need to be gendered? Perhaps there is some innate difference in men and women’s teeth, like women have more xylitol or men have more. Maybe men having teeth is a huge conspiracy taken on our gender, made to for some unknown reason mask the difference between genders.
Misleading
“The bubbling paste they put in one of their many body cavities, you know!!”
“But, what are you talking about?”
“The humans do it, as soom sort of daily thing, it’s probably linked to one of their religions or something, possibly another way they use to assert the dominance over other weaker willed humans.”
“You say they do it every day?!”
“Sometimes more, two times, three times, these slimeballs can’t get enough”
Shows picture”
“They are cleaning their skeleton??!?! WHy are theY cleaNIng their SkelEtoN?!?!”
“I told you, it’s some sort of purification process, be more open minded greg”
Toothpaste is Obsolete
Dennis the Dentist was going to have to forcibly retire early, he was obsolete. His entire life, career, 30 years in the industry all gone down the tube. Now with the fancy new tongue depressors that lasered off any germs, decay, or … Everyone literally had personal dentists at their beck and call every night. Teeth had again become umbrellaed under the direction of the general m.d., as most incidents were usually in painfully losing teeth in drunken brawl, slick bathroom floors, and general clumsiness. For all the progress we’ve made we are still the same old dolts.
Toothpaste is obsolete, dentists are obsolete, floss, mouthwash, and any oral hygiene is obsolete. No longer do people need to spend effort and time on the mundane task of keeping the chompers strong and white.
The manufacturers, and factory workers had lost their jobs long ago in the robot revolution.
Toothpaste is always there, hyper regulated, present, etc.
Jimmy really didn’t think through his transgressions as he was making them. If he had, he would have remembered the mouth froth, his own mouth pressed together in bitter memory.
Whenever, people had a problem with communication, and beyond oral communication, in our modern day it’s still used metaphorically on all media types, tv, magazines, social media. If you made a faux pas you would have to go through The Cleaning. The barbarism extended so far that now, for celebrities they are often made public. People at their most vulnerable having to clean their spit tank and eating parts in front of everyone. People were a lot more cautious about what they say now. There are no Kanye’s in the world of mouth froth.
Jimmy’s eyes got watery, and his knee started bouncing quickly and impulsively, why couldn’t he keep his mouth shut? His substitute teacher was being heinously cruel, and he won sympathetic looks from his peers he could feel them on his back.
Toothpaste Alternatives
Jenny had had enough of the mall, and her mother more specifically. She pleaded staunchy gums, and made her way to the bathroom just to get some blessed reprieve from her dictating, nosy and passively insulting reality tv star of her mother.
She pulled her toothbrush out of its bedazzled rhinestone box, a gift from her best friend freshman year, Rachel put a boujee spin on everything: “if you have to do it all the time, why not look boujee while doing it” and grim faced looked at the twin liquid dispensers. One was for hand soap and the other toothpaste.
She made the unfortunate mistake at least 7 times in her life, but thankfully there is a learning curve for the bitter and poisonous effects of consuming hand soap. Didn’t seem like the best design… but how else were people supposed to have widespread access to such a necessity. Everyone needed to brush their teeth, anyway, it was a problem with no solution.
She carefully pressed in onto her toothbrush and whistled, this was blueberry flavor, they must be out of spearmint.
People’s attitudes about toothpaste tend to be —- but their attitudes should probably be —-.
People thought of toothpaste in this impoverished village as a product for the hoity toity. Only a weakling and a prude must strengthen the strongest part of one’s body: the bone.
Foreign people had come for about 4 years, with plenty of interesting gambits. One of them installed the ingenious irrigation system now used by every farmer within 10 miles. And the handsoap they had been given decreased illness so much! But lately they had been pressing the utmost of affected culture on us, simple people. Why must our mouth be pretty, when it can eat? It’s function is already good. Why waste so much time and money on smiles, you can smile for free!
In the particularly bad years, as he stumbled through mounds of trash looking for anything salvageable he had seen the tubes with disdain.
Interesting Toothpaste stuff?
You have to spit it back out, like they haven’t invented one where you can just swallow
It’s so frothy and bubbly
It is a part of habit, one of the most pervasive and strong ones
You are publicly shamed/socially shamed if you do not do it
Tooth care is so vital that its covered in our benefits and insurance
Toothpaste was first popularized by pepsodent
It comes in many flavors like bubblegum, etc. but it’s weird if you don’t use mint/spearmint/boring flavor.
It is a single representative of Americans obsession with bright white straight teeth, that we must do it every day, twice a day.
With the increase in sugar and
Tone of the Paper:
For this paper I want a critical tone. Why do we do the things that we do? And how did teeth become a part of beauty that we invest so much in. Why is it normal to have braces for years, and get your wisdom teeth removed. In other countries the same standard of beauty do not exist, so how did it develop and why does it remain, not just for celebrities but for the average civilian.
Feeling, wow humans are weird
And perhaps most perplexing of this whole ordeal is that it is so ingrained in our health, ideas of beauty, simple grooming, and status. From middle school onward it is normal to put metal wires designed to push our bones about so they are more pleasing to look at. Teeth bleaching and dentistry is required to be a normal person.
One Idea to leave off with
Sometimes habits are formed for us by social pressure, and we attribute more importance on them than if we had made the decision for ourselves, or if we were in different circumstances. Other people tell us that having pretty is important, so we believe it and everyone does and that is our culture. But in for example, east asia, nobody cares about teeth, they put the same emphasis on skin as we do on teeth. In some ways to be “normal” we are forced to bow to the whims of our collective expectations but always realize what you are giving up and the consequences if you do.
English 298 Adventures 