Smile like you mean it

Top and skirt (comes as set): Choies

Bag: Gracious Aires (Similar here)

Here I am carrying the imaginary Olympic torch with poise

Shoes: Charles and Keith (Similar here)

Necklace: Gift from aunty B (Similar here and here)

Rings: Vintage (Similar here and here)

Someone once told me that I should smile more because I look prettier when I smile. To be honest, I'm sure I look more approachable and I totally should smile more. Especially since my momma paid nearly $5000 to make my smile what it is today.

When I was 12, my dentist referred me to orthodontist Dr. Kaan Sheung Kin from the Dental Profile for orthodontic treatment aka braces! When I first sat down on his dental chair (my heart beating 19748 beats a minute because dentists are scary), Dr. Kaan asked me "do you want to wear braces?" to which my mother replied, "Of course she must!". Obviously at that age, I really hadn't thought much about what it meant besides having to visit the dentist regularly to insert metal bits into my mouth, but while my head was screaming 'OHGODNOSAVEME', I dutifully listened to my mom and nodded yes.

The momster did me a solid.

Sorry about the low qual but this is to illustrate the bad teeth (and hair and t-shirt)

To anyone with a crooked smile, thinking of wearing braces, I would say a wholehearted 'DO IT'. Imagining myself with the same jacked up smile I had as a kid is scary and I can only imagine the oral hygiene issues I might face today. If you're considering it but haven't yet made up your mind, the following are a bunch of things that have stayed in my memory (whether fondly or not):

• Taking a mold of my mouth before braces and after braces is horrible. The plaster smelled disgusting and made me gag. I hope they've changed the taste/smell or how they take the mold because seriously, this gives me the heebiejeebies. 
• It's not really painful as much as it is aching. It feels like period cramps of the mouth every month when you tighten those wires and that lasts at least for the first few days and everything you eat has to be liquidy like porridge, soup, other food mashed into porridgey-soup consistency. 
• I learned how to swallow pills at that age because I was swallowing food that I couldn't finish chewing up (because my gums ached) so I figured, how hard can it be to swallow pills. 
• You can't chew gum 
• Biting into a whole uncut apple is not possible 
• Peanuts can break your damn wires. This happened as I ate a crunchy peanut butter sandwich but that seemed kinda like a freak accident.
• You can put funky coloured rubber bands on the braces - don't choose black, you might think black is cool but it just looks like holes in your teeth. I had the holes in my teeth look for a month. Awful. 
• I wore my retainers religiously even into university (then I lost them) but I think the longer you wear them, the better it is.
• I had to put wax on my braces closer to the back of my mouth a lot because the metal bracket would rub on the inside of my mouth and give me blisters but the memory of the pain really has faded.
• Removing the braces feels really weird and aggressive, but once it's out, it feels like FREEDOM. 
• Eating with retainers on is disgusting but interesting too. 

I think I was a little bit self-conscious about my braces but these days there are things like Invisalign or ceramic braces that are less obvious although I think they also cost a little more.

Actually, thank goodness for low quality photos of yesteryear - I'm wearing braces in this pic but muahahaha it can't be seen.

Let's be honest, no one likes the dentist and I think I felt pretty low at the beginning of my braces-wearing and also each month when I had to get them tightened, but if I had to go back in time and answer Dr. Kaan's question, I wouldn't change my answer. I'm glad I have a nice set of straight aligned teeth rather than look like this guy:

No offence dude

Thanks for reading!