Dental Veneers: Customised Differently For Women & Men
Is it surprising?
The world is geared to customisation. There’s no point in even starting to list the things that can be customised. Or even things that can’t. Knowing it runs very quickly from the sublime to the ridiculous is enough. We’ve been personalising stuff since the Ottoman Empire, when as part of the pre-wedding ritual, brides of the elite would have linens and pestemals elaborately embroidered with a unique pattern as a symbol of bonding with their husband.
Since then, we’ve had more than a thousand years to come up with more ways to do that and more stuff to do it with. The human body is no exception.
The pink-and-white, upper-only, mint-and-vanilla confection from the 1960s that fitted some kids perfectly was not the point at which false teeth were ever going to stay. Imagine if it was a deeply subconscious suggestion to get used to pretend teeth because sooner or later you’ll have ’em. A study should be conducted establishing the correlation between the regular milk bar purchases of the lolly-stage beginnings, and age-appropriate dental investment in real ones.
Extend the research to chocolate cigarettes. Paper-eaters and non paper-eaters. Those stupid sugar ones with the red-coloured end don’t count; and may be up for a completely different study and an NHMRC grant.
Dental veneers were around way before Allen’s came up with the idea of coating milk teeth in sugar with sugar-infused teeth; and way, way before it was gobbled up by Nestlé like KitKats in Japan. That the product name sounds like kittu katsu a phrase meaning “surely you will win” is a highly lucrative marketing fluke to the tune of 5 million sold a day.
A $US250,000 profit for Nestlé every day, in one country. No wonder the Japanese market gets more than 400 versions of regional flavours, with 35-plus available at any given time. Nestlé gives two fingers to the Japanese.
Make of that what you will.
It’s difficult to name an aspect of consumerism that doesn’t allow for personalisation, even the simplest. Cosmetic dentistry has, for a long time, reminded us how personal, how necessary, how naturally few and how attainable an impressive smile can be. Advances in technology, technique and materials means you can look more like yourself than you did when you was just you.
It was an art once confined to Hollywood. The silver screen, no less. And in 1928 they were as temporary as a stint on the casting couch, lasting only hours before they were removed.
A century later we can look back at that with the fondness of a classic screening of H.G Wells’ Things to Come and how far we’ve come since then. Complete customisation of dental veneers for shape, length and realistic tooth tone has been part of the process since around the time Talking Heads made Stop Making Sense make a resounding, reverberating, timeless, whole load of sense.
It’s been a long time. So it’s hardly surprising that veneers have moved along from all-purpose, to the advanced technology and cosmetic techniques of contouring brought about by digital design.
Dental anatomy does have a generally noticeable dimorphism about it. Although it all does the same job, men’s teeth are longer and wider; women’s proportionally smaller, and with a slightly curved edge.
Much better than the Allen’s version though.
There are distinctions between incisors, lateral incisors, canines and the arc of a smile that happened six weeks after we began our life on this planet and it makes no sense to change them. Unless you’re changing other things to accommodate that. Then it makes complete sense where it otherwise wouldn’t, after the gender-affirming facial surgeries that alter the structure of the jawline, chin and cheekbones.
Adhering veneers lacking the suitable differences in shades of white, luminosity and millimetre-alterations in dimension and contours will get the laughs you wanted with lolly teeth as a kid, and definitely not what you’re aiming for as an adult needing more than pocket money.
Dental work is expensive. Which why they’ve gotta be right the first time. There’s anywhere between 5-20 years before you’ll be doing it again; all dependent upon some things that are outside your control, and many things within.
The artistry, expertise, experience and craftsmanship of the dentist (craftspersonship surely in 2026) is within your realm only to the extent of making an informed choice after some quality research beyond TikTok and flashy ads. After that, it’s their hand and their handling; and you don’t want to ever feel that your decision was not a wise one. Cheaper is not always better, no matter how alluring it is to have an exotic holiday thrown in. It makes financial sense for a vacation be included in your dental dime. Like a bizarre, self-constructed fly-buys deal.
What is completely within your control, is how you meticulously care for your veneers after the entire process is over. Most of the time is good enough – remembering that each time you let it slip, so does something healthy and resilient about your veneers. Postponing the necessarily more frequent dental check-ups in our Sunbury dental clinic is ensuring the missed opportunity for an easy fix or a simple preventative therapy.
Working around the works in which a spanner has been thrown is a fairly consistent theme of modern life. It’s certainly transportable to committing to a dental regimen with a vow that has “I do” sound like a question. What else needs to be transportable in this transition, are the dental products you’ll rarely leave the house without. Just to see you through the day, before all the big stuff at night. It’s kinda exciting in the beginning. Everything’s new. There’s a sense of newfound achievement, the learning curve is encouraging and a 15-minute before bed routine is nothing. Notwithstanding that it’s fivefold the 3-minutes that was likely never properly managed, and it’ll be fine until the shininess wears off and you forget to get floss.
What you can, can’t, and must do as the proud wearer of dental veneers is totally weird for everyone else and completely worth it for you. It should be looked upon as obsessive car care for your teeth.
Which is not a bad thing at all, and mostly what we wish we’d done in the first place. The one thing that’s no different for women and men.