BOGOTA, 8 October 2003 — More than people in most nations, Colombians go in for plastic surgery. Breasts gorged with silicone, buttock implants, liposuction, lip jobs. Go to any flashy nightclub in Bogota or Medellin on a Friday night and the quantity of enhanced curves on display would put the Michelin Man to shame.
But what really strikes many visitors to this war-torn country is not the flattering legacy of the cosmetic surgeon’s knife: It’s people’s teeth. Not the pearly whites themselves, but rather the gleaming metal braces that squeezed them into perfect shining rows in the first place.
While data on braces’ use in different countries is hard to obtain, huge numbers of adult people here have them. Television reporters, bank tellers, even serving police officers have subjected themselves to what in many countries is mainly an unpleasant rite of passage reserved for adolescents.
“If we walk down the street 10 blocks in Bogota, we’ll see 10 adults with braces,” said Carol Masciola, a resident American and expectant mother who was so emboldened by Colombia’s dentally liberated atmosphere that she decided to get braces herself.
“I guess that as an adult you have to decide that you’re gonna look kind of dumb for two years,” she said, finding time to speak to Reuters as she reclined in her orthodontist’s chair waiting for her braces to be tightened. “It’s easier here because there are so many other people doing it,” she added, explaining that she felt more of a “spectacle” when she visited her parents in the United States. “I remember I had one teacher in high school who had braces and it was an oddity.”
Marlon Becerra, a flamboyant Bogota dentist whose practice is frequented by soap opera stars and other denizens of Colombia’s celebrity circuit, says he clamps braces on 80 percent of his patients.
“One day a patient came in and said, ‘I want you to give me braces and sort out my teeth.’ He was 74 years old. So I asked him, ‘Why do you want braces now?’ and he said, ‘Because I want to end my days with a spectacular smile,’” said Becerra.
Nattily turned out in an orange tie beneath his white dentist’s coat, Becerra acknowledges that braces are more common in Colombia than elsewhere, but professes to be baffled as to why. “Why don’t they do it in other countries? Colombian people are definitely more aesthetically demanding than normal,” he said, pointing to the high incidence of bust and backside implants, and not only among his own clients.
Metal-mouths were encouraged by a recent Colombian soap opera, “Ugly Betty,” in which the heroine, in reality a gorgeous actress, wore braces in a bid to pretend to be unattractive.
It is also cheap to have your mouth clamped in Colombia. Becerra’s clinic, expensive by local standards, charges about $600 for putting on braces and adjusting them over 18 months, a fraction of the cost in the United States.
“A city I know well, for example, is New York. I think everyone there would wear braces if they could. Why? Beauty. The place demands good looks. They just don’t wear them because they’re too expensive,” concluded Becerra.
Europeans, on the other hand, are a lost cause, hopelessly resigned to crooked gnashers. “In Europe, they’re just not interested in cosmetic procedures,” lamented Becerra.
“I’ve always wondered why. It’s the cradle of art, the cradle of everything, and they’re not interested in cosmetic procedures. Why? I don’t know why.”
As befits a temple to oral beauty, Becerra does not call his clinic a clinic, but rather “the Dental Aesthetics Unit”.
A gleaming white corridor leads away from the reception area, past multiple television screens alternating views of tropical beaches and shining white teeth, to surgeries with state-of-the-art laser equipment.
Phosphorescent backlights make patients’ teeth glow eerily. “I like to see to teeth in different lights,” said Becerra, who, unusually for a dentist, has his own celebrity interview show on Colombian television.
Photographs of stunning models and beauty queens, former patients, line the walls of his clinic, grinning.
Becerra also publishes a glossy catalogue, illustrated by photographs of open-mouthed society beauties. One picture, of a one-eyed model with a patch, is accompanied by the caption: “For many, the eyes are the essence of seduction. I learned how to conquer my world with my smile.”
