Why so white?

LITTLE ROCK — White. Whiter. Whitest. Wowie!

Americans spend $1 billion a year, by some estimates, on everything from bleaching to veneers at the dentist’s office and on the drugstore’s aisle of do-it-yourself whitening products.

Whiter isn’t necessarily healthier. Done wrong, it might cause problems. But it looks better - like movie-star teeth, good news and blue sky. Looks like you got the job, and here comes a kiss.

“Flirt with confidence” is the promise from BriteSmile, a professional treatment. “Flash a whiter smile” is the pitch from Crest Whitestrips to use at home. “Get ready to believe in magic” is a line from Tooth Fairy, the movie starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and his ivories.

Hollywood sets the standard for white teeth with every whiter-than-popcorn smile that fills the screen. But ordinary mortals have normal teeth, and normal comes in a range of shades from white to off-white to more-or-less stained. The question is: How white is white enough?

How white do teeth have to be to look respectable? To make a snazzy impression? Score a date? Write a newspaper story? (The reporter is close-lipped.) Take to the stage? ...

“Most actors arrive on the scene with beautiful, white teeth,” says Robert Hupp, artistic director of Arkansas Repertory Theatre in Little Rock. He can’t recall ever having to direct an actor to whiten up, although sometimes “to knock the whiteness down a notch or two” to suit a role.

“Most professional actors work in commercials and print, and perfect teeth are a must on that side of the business,” Hupp says.The focus on teeth comes from “all the new whitening products in the past decade,” Hupp says, making “treatments and results possible that would have been prohibitively expensive in the past.”

Jaw-dropping white is possible for almost anyone who is able and determined to chase the elusive goal of white-beyond-white to the leprechaun’s pot o’ teeth at the end of the rainbow. But then, another question: How white is too white?

“Really, really, really white teeth are distracting, I think,” says Melissa Moody of Excel Models & Talent in Little Rock. Fashion models are supposed to show off, not outshine, the outfits they wear. “We don’t like people to do anything unnatural.”

“Dentists certainly feel there is ‘too white,’” according to Dr. Scott Swank, former dentist and now curator of the National Museum of Dentistry in Baltimore, having seen the trend coming.

“When I was in practice, it was difficult to get a full denture patient to accept artificial teeth that were more natural looking and not as white as one could order,” he relates.

Now, people want super white crowns and bridges to match the snow-blinding brilliance of their already-whitened natural teeth - a look that has to be maintained, since whitening fades - a mouthful of commitment, all for a white smile.

WHITE KNIGHT

A smile to white perfection isn’t everything. Some people like gold teeth. David Letterman’s white but gap toothed grin is a comic trademark. Hillary Duff’s outsize veneers (false fronts) set off Internet voting on whether or not she looks better, yea or neigh. Sometimes, any tooth at all looks like a winner.

But here in America 2010 - in the glitter and gleam of Jessica Simpson, George Clooney and Johnny Depp - a nation led by a president with claim to the whitest teeth ever to rival the White House - white space sells.

For this, a large bite of thanks goes to the dentist behind Depp’s dazzlers, Dr. Irwin Smigel of New York, the silver-haired, white-smiling patriarch and president of the 32-year-old American Society for Dental Aesthetics.

“Everybody wants to be beautiful,” Smigel says, happy to take credit as the “father of aesthetic dentistry” but not so thrilled with the bewildering array of strips, trays, pastes, gels, whitening mouthwashes, chewing gums, power brushes and light-beaming gizmos that confront today’s seeker of an alabaster glow.

“I don’t want to take credit for that,” he says.

Consumer Reports surveyed the array of home products last year, finding strips that dissolve, strips that stick on, some that work pretty well - Crest Whitestrips Supreme in particular - but nothing guaranteed “extreme results.” Americans spend hundreds of millions of dollars on whitening strips anyway.

The trend is too much to explain as one guy’s idea, but Smigel tells how his bonding technique made him famous - dentist to the stars including Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony and Justin Timberlake - 30 years ago on a TV show called That’s Incredible!

The series that presented amazing quirks of nature, death-defying stunts and, in the case of Smigel’s appearance, a demonstration of how easily veneers could improve a person’s appearance. Incredible!

In 1985, Smigel concocted a whitening toothpaste to give his patients for occasional stains. Mademoiselle magazine wrote it up, and Smigel’s upscale line of Supersmile products has been on the market ever since ($21 a tube of toothpaste at Dillard’s).

“White teeth make you look vibrant,” he says, “make you look young.” WHITE GOLD

Teeth can turn yellow and dull-looking for many reasons. Smoking and darkcolored beverages in general - coffee, tea, red wine - do the dirty work over time. But the cause that looks the worst in the mirror is apt to be age.

Children’s white teeth are beginner’s luck. Pretty girls have smiles made of peppermint Chiclets. But age scrapes away at those once flawless rows of white. Tooth enamel not only stains, but also can wear thin over the years, turning translucent and blue-gray, and the yellowish interior of the tooth (called dentin) shows through.

Stained or just plain old and discolored teeth call attention to a person’s years, the last thing anybody wants to advertise these days: being long in the tooth.

WHITE-OUT

The history of man’s quest for white teeth is practically as old as white sand.

“There is evidence that early humans cleaned their teeth with small bones used as toothpicks,” according to Swank’s studies at the National Museum of Dentistry. “It seems that most cultures have viewed whiter teeth as healthy.”

The Romans scrubbed with mixtures that included crushed oyster shells and pumice - an abrasive that shined their teeth, literally, to nothing. Swank compares it to Clorox.

“I doubt much of it would have been swallowed,” he hopes, “due to the taste.”

Americans were late starters in the race for white. It took World War II to get people in general to take up brushing with a fervor. Brushing was one way the Army taught soldiers to stay healthy, and they brought the habit home. Television arrived just in time to second the elbow motion.

“Pepsodent,” Swank recalls one of early-day TV’s toothpaste ads: “‘You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.’ Gleem said it all in its name. Ultrabrite advertised increased sex appeal.”

No matter the claim, natural teeth “will only whiten to a given degree,” he cautions.

The degree is a matter of factors such as “the opacity of the enamel,” thickness of the dentin and whether the discoloration is what dentists call extrinsic (stained on the outside) or intrinsic (stained from the inside, a tougher blemish to hide).

Veneers could be the ultimate answer to a stubbornly dingy smile. (Short of Clark Gable’s solution: He had all his gaping, wobbly, aching teeth yanked at age 32, opting for the dentures that he so handsomely beamed as Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind.)

WHITE HOPE

Smigel’s advice is to start any kind of whitening treatment with a trip to the den

tist. “You’ve got to,” he says.Take care of any cracks

or cavities, and only then think about whitening.

Bad teeth and gums can be especially sensitive to bleach. Ow! At worst, a botched try at do-it-yourself whitening can lead to other worries.

“I’ve seen people, unfortunately, needing root canals,” Smigel says.

White teeth cost $20, $30 ... $50 for over-the-counter whiteners that take weeks to work, hundreds for an afternoon’s professional whitening or thousands for veneers, permanently bonded to natural teeth. People have different ideas on how much white teeth are worth.

“Now, for example, Europe has a different concept of white,” Smigel says. “They only want teeth to be natural. Natural is kind of darkish. California, white is vital.”

Arkansas? It’s a riddle to chew on. Arkansas is the Natural State. But the Razorback has pearly tusks.