![\"Screenshot_1\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/11\/Screenshot_120.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhy so many girls braced for beauty? More girls than boys want braces, and more parents of girls want their kids to have them, even though girls\u2019 teeth are no more crooked or misplaced than boys\u2019. This is just one manifestation of the greater tendency to value appearance for girls and women more than for boys and men. But because braces are expensive, this is also tied up with social class, so that richer people are more likely to get their kids\u2019 teeth straightened, and as a result richer girls are more likely to meet (and set) beauty standards.<\/p>\n
Hard numbers on how many kids get braces are surprisingly hard to come by. However, the government\u2019s\u00a0medical expenditure survey<\/a>\u00a0shows that 17 percent of children ages 11-17 saw an orthodontist in the last year, which means the number getting braces at some point in their lives is higher than that. The numbers are rising, and girls are wearing most of hardware.<\/p>\n A\u00a0study of Michigan public school students<\/a>\u00a0showed that although boys and girls had equal treatment needs (orthodontists have developed sophisticated tools for measuring this need, which everyone agrees is usually aesthetic), girls\u2019 attitudes about their own teeth were quite different:<\/p>\n Clearly, braces are popular among American kids, with about half in this study saying they want them, but that sentiment is more common among girls, who are twice as likely as boys to say they don\u2019t like their teeth.<\/p>\n This lines up with other studies that have shown\u00a0girls want braces more<\/a>\u00a0at a given level of need, and they are\u00a0more likely than boys to get orthodontic treatment<\/a>\u00a0after being referred to a specialist. Among those getting braces, there are\u00a0more girls whose need is low or borderline<\/a>. A\u00a0study of 12-19 year-olds<\/a>getting braces at a university clinic found 56 percent of the girls, compared with 47 percent of the boys, had \u201clittle need\u201d for them on the aesthetic scale.<\/p>\n The same pattern is\u00a0found in Germany<\/a>, where 38 percent of girls versus 30 percent of boys ages 11-14 have braces, and\u00a0in Britain<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 both countries where braces are covered by state health insurance if they are needed, but parents can pay for them if they aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n Among American adults, women are also\u00a0more likely to get braces<\/a>, leading the way in the adult orthodontic trend. (Google \u201cmother daughter braces\u201d and you get mothers and daughters getting braces together; \u201cfather son braces\u201d brings you to orthodontic practices run by father-son teams.)<\/p>\n Teeth and consequences<\/b><\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n Today\u2019s rich and famous people \u2013 at least the one whose faces we see a lot \u2013 usually have straight white teeth, and most people don\u2019t get that way without some intervention. And lots of people get that.<\/p>\n Girls are held to a higher beauty standard and feel the pressure \u2013 from media, peers or parents \u2013 to get their teeth straightened. They want braces, and for good reason. Unfortunately, this subjects them to needless medical procedures and reinforces the over-valuing of appearance. However, it also shows one way that parents invest more in their girls, perhaps thinking they need to prepare them for successful careers and relationships by spending more on their looks.<\/p>\n When they\u2019re grown up, of course, women get\u00a0a lot more cosmetic surgery<\/a>\u00a0than men do \u2013 87 percent of all surgical procedures, and 94% of Botox-type procedures \u2013 and that gap is growing over time.<\/p>\n As is the case with lots of cosmetic procedures, people from wealthier families generally are\u00a0less likely to need braces<\/a>\u00a0but more likely to get them. But add this to the gender pattern, and what emerges is a system in which richer girls (voluntarily or not) and their parents set the standard for beauty \u2013 and then reap the rewards (as well as harms) of reaching it.<\/p>\n Cross-posted at Family Inequality<\/a>, Adios Barbie<\/a>,\u00a0and Jezebel<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\nPhilip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and writes the blog Family Inequality<\/a>. You can follow him on Twitter<\/a> or Facebook<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sociologists like to say that gender identities are socially constructed. That just means that what it is, and what it means, to be male or female is at least partly the outcome of social interaction between people \u2013 visible through the rules, attitudes, media, or ideals in the social world. And that process sometimes involves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":58960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,230,223,29,55,2089,2103,2099,2091,252,778,23694],"class_list":["post-58953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-cosmetic-surgery","tag-childrenyouth","tag-class","tag-gender","tag-gender-beauty","tag-gender-bodies","tag-gender-childrenyouth","tag-gender-healthmedicine","tag-healthmedicine","tag-intersectionality","tag-intersectionality-gender-x-class"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/11\/Screenshot_216.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58953"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62922,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58953\/revisions\/62922"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>