Professional Smile

The Secret Lives of Dentists is not a good movie.


But there are a couple of monologues/truisms about teeth that I found poignant. In the beginning, Campbell Scott (who we remember from such films as Singles, ) who plays a dentist husband to his dentist wife says,
"Teeth outlast everything. Death is nothing to a tooth. Life is what destroys teeth."

And he’s right, morbidly right.
It’s the living that kills us.

Back in my temping days, I used to think a lot about the Professional Smile. So much import is placed on smiles (teeth) and nowhere maybe more than the workplace where aside from exchanges like “Colder than it looks out there,” we are mostly judged on how we react to passing people in the hall. Smiling. These kinds of encounters caused me a great deal of anxiety in high school and college (“the hall”) but as I am gradually becoming less anxious in general… perhaps I am getting better at them. In any case there are a genre of people who, I believe, think I am insane due to this anxiety and ill skill at semi-formal superficial social interactions. Co-workers from nearly every job I’ve had, come to think of it. Many professors. My host family in Chile. So all these folks who figure in prominently, but not essentially to life must mostly assess me based on my smile, which is continually deteriorating. The smile which, I figure, has got to be the only reason they still seem to like me (although it is true that some people like everyone, we can’t rely on this) since my related behavior can be erratic. Or was erratic, back when I was anxious. Anyway, to sum this all up, the professional smile is artificial, should be associated with rotting rather than business casual, and, for me, usually hides a string of violent profanity running through my head.