{"id":1987,"date":"2013-10-28T09:00:43","date_gmt":"2013-10-28T09:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/charisma.local\/charisma2023\/char1smaSSL\/?post_type=consumption&p=1987"},"modified":"2025-09-27T23:45:47","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T22:45:47","slug":"whats-in-a-smile-oral-health-consumption-and-technology","status":"publish","type":"consumption","link":"https:\/\/www.journalofculturaleconomy.org\/charisma\/consumption\/whats-in-a-smile-oral-health-consumption-and-technology","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s in a smile? Oral health, consumption and technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Simon Carter, Judy Green and Nicki Thorogood<\/strong><\/p>\n

We all know that toothache can often involve unbearable pain for the sufferer. \u00a0From Shakespeare to Shaw writers have remarked on how the agony of dental pain can lead to total distraction from all else.\u00a0 Robert Burns even wrote an \u2018Address to the Toothache<\/a>\u2019, in which he demonises and curses the affliction.\u00a0 At a time when thousands of people still struggle to access\u00a0NHS dentists<\/a>\u00a0it would seem that prevention rather than cure is the best strategy.\u00a0 Official advice on avoiding toothache \u00a0recommends<\/a>that we brush our teeth at least twice a day using toothpaste that contains fluoride.\u00a0 Most of us stick to this advice and go through this daily ritual with little self-awareness.\u00a0 While tooth brushing may be mundane it is also a curious activity that straddles the boundary between health and cosmetic maintenance.\u00a0 It is also big business, with UK sales alone totalling over\u00a0\u00a31 billion<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 a market that blurs the line between marketing, advertising, health education and public health. The scale of these profits suggest we should pay greater scrutiny to the worth and value of these dental technologies.<\/p>\n

\"toobrush-shop\"<\/a>

The bewildering array of dental health products<\/p><\/div>\n

Supermarkets and pharmacies carry an ever growing array of toothpastes, tooth-gels, mouthwashes, flosses and dental brushing devices. Between 1961 and 1998 over\u00a03000 patents<\/a>\u00a0were filed for toothbrush designs.\u00a0 This growth in dental products has occurred alongside significant shifts in understanding of oral health over the last two decades.\u00a0 A fargreater proportion of children become adults<\/a>\u00a0with healthy teeth than have ever done before.\u00a0 There has been a move away from dentists repairing damage towards preventative self-management of dental disease through the application of technologies in the home. In an extension of new markets many of these technologies, such as tooth whitening kits, are more concerned with cosmetic appearance than any purported health gain.<\/p>\n

\"gap<\/a>

The gap-toothed smile of models like Georgia Jagger have popularised quirky dental treatments<\/p><\/div>\n

Such cosmetic effects are not trivial; in a culture where \u2018good teeth\u2019 have become a symbol of middle class adequacy \u2018rotten\u2019 and uneven teeth have\u00a0become a marker of low status<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 Taking care of ones teeth is an activity where it is difficult to separate \u2018health\u2019 from \u2018consumer culture\u2019.\u00a0 Like many other health behaviours today consumers are facing ever more complex decisions and have to draw on an increasing array of information in order to make choices about\u00a0what<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0how<\/i>\u00a0to consume. This is not only to prevent disease, but also to display valued social identities.\u00a0 Dental professionals spend an increasing proportion of their time on cosmetic procedures rather than fixing rotten teeth.\u00a0 Indeed in a strange reversal, there is now a move, in Japan and America, away from a \u2018too perfect\u2019 set of straight, \u2018picket fence\u2019 teeth towards orthodontics being used to actually introduce\u00a0gaps<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0crooked teeth<\/a>\u00a0into mouths.<\/p>\n

The increasing commodification of the toothbrush means that when buying something as simple as a brush to put in the mouth, consumers are confronted with a bewildering range of brands, textures and sizes. All this before they even have to consider different brushing techniques.\u00a0 \u00a0And the mouth, maintained on a daily basis by the toothbrush, itself has a peculiarly symbolic position in our culture.\u00a0 The mouth is the space through which things pass both into and out of bodies.\u00a0 It is the boundary between the self and society.\u00a0 As such it is surrounded by a\u00a0whole series of conventions and taboos<\/a>\u00a0concerning what we will and will not allow to enter it.\u00a0 How many of us are comfortable sharing a toothbrush?<\/p>\n

\"Early<\/a>

Early electric toothbrushes were bulky and sometimes unreliable<\/p><\/div>\n

A relatively recent addition to the technologies available for oral care is the electric toothbrush.\u00a0 Of course the electric toothbrush has been around for decades but early innovations were bulky, inefficient and unreliable with few people using them.\u00a0 They are now in widespread use and there is an increasing availability of the electric toothbrush in supermarkets and pharmacies.<\/p>\n

Our own qualitative research<\/a>\u00a0found that whilst the uptake and use of the electric toothbrush (ETB) was relatively common, the ETB presented users with a number of problems.\u00a0\u00a0 Some thought that the ETB was unnecessary \u2018over kill\u2019 \u2013 a solution in search of a problem.\u00a0 But others, often after a negative encounter with a dental professional, were keen to adopt or at least try an ETB, as a means of ensuring reduced contact with dentists (i.e. as a technique of dental self-management). But even after deciding to acquire an ETB the purchase itself was not simple and was compared to the confusion of buying a mobile phone.<\/p>\n

Once people started using the ETB problems continued with many complained that the technology was not suited to the British home.\u00a0 Many houses do not have electrical outlets in the bathroom and yet this is where people brush their teeth.\u00a0 Most felt uncomfortable brushing their teeth elsewhere in the house.\u00a0 This meant that ETBs frequently ran out of power and were then abandoned. \u00a0The ETB also often caused mild domestic conflicts.\u00a0 This happened in two ways: where a base unit was shared users became disgusted when other users failed to clean up the debris and gunk; or where the device had a built in timer there were often disputes between parents and children over the length of time spent brushing.\u00a0 There was also a generalised feeling that the ETB user was in some way more ridiculous than a manual toothbrush user: few were prepared to use in front of others, even when in their own home.\u00a0 In short, the ETB appeared to be an \u2018unstable\u2019 object in the home.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The expensive ETB \u2013 a reification of dental health?<\/p><\/div>\n

The ETB is now widely used in many households and there is often a feeling, (sometimes as a result of negative encounters with dental professionals) that they are superior for oral health care. However, our research has shown that there is nothing inevitable about this process and the ETB often becomes an \u2018unstable\u2019 object within the domestic environment.\u00a0 Be this as it may, most people had at some point bought an electric toothbrush and attempted to incorporate the device into their routines.\u00a0 Indeed many people had attempted this more than once so perhaps the instability of ETB is not so important when we are all willing to continue buying them. As a domestic health technology that blurs the boundary between public health, marketing and consumption it is no wonder the market for oral health care is growing so rapidly.<\/p>\n

A more extended version of this post appears as a paper in\u00a0Social Theory and Health<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Acknowledgements:<\/strong> \u00a0As part of our inter-network collaboration, this article is reproduced from an\u00a0original post<\/a>\u00a0on the\u00a0Cost of Living Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cover photo:<\/strong> Vanessa’s New Toothbrush ELECTRIC from Jesse Menn’s Flikr Photostream.<\/p>\n

About the Authors<\/strong>: Simon Carter<\/a> is based at the Open University and has researched and published on health, medicine and technology. \u00a0Judy Green<\/a>\u00a0is based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and has researched and published on methodology, risk and the sociology of health. \u00a0Nicki Thorogood<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0is based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and has\u00a0research interests in the sociology of health promotion and of mental health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Drawing on recent research, Simon Carter, Judy Green and Nicki Thorogood examine the consequences of the increasing commodification of the toothbrush Read More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":1988,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,7],"tags":[295,277,742,740,743,741],"class_list":["post-1987","consumption","type-consumption","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all","category-writing","tag-advertising","tag-consumption","tag-cosmetics","tag-oral-health","tag-public-health","tag-toothbrushes"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.journalofculturaleconomy.org\/charisma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/consumption\/1987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.journalofculturaleconomy.org\/charisma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/consumption"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.journalofculturaleconomy.org\/charisma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/consumption"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.journalofculturaleconomy.org\/charisma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.journalofculturaleconomy.org\/charisma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1987"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.journalofculturaleconomy.org\/charisma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/consumption\/1987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2966,"href":"https:\/\/www.journalofculturaleconomy.org\/charisma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/consumption\/1987\/revisions\/2966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.journalofculturaleconomy.org\/charisma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.journalofculturaleconomy.org\/charisma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.journalofculturaleconomy.org\/charisma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.journalofculturaleconomy.org\/charisma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}