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[8] Dentistry is not a contemporary construct. Thousands of years ago, Incans placed shell implants, and Egyptians inlaid their teeth with precious metals. Even the institution has been important enough to differentiate its educational system— dental school is different than medical school. History aside, the mouth is the only orifice that smiles back at us in the mirror every morning, indicating the implicit importance of dentistry. A smile goes beyond simply anatomy; its esthetic quality communicates health, well-being, and even status. This makes the mouth and the face—the orofacial structures, in dental lingo—important.

[9] As student clinicians, my classmates and I saw evidence of this everyday in the dental clinic: our patients sit in the chair, fidget anxiously, and say, apologetically, “I just ate lunch” or “I didn’t have a chance to brush” or “I try to floss regularly”. They are embarrassed to open their mouths in front of people who chose mouths and teeth as their professional undertaking. Judging by their reticence to “open up”, we can safely assume that this is an intensely personal space: the mouth runs the gamut from function and survival to social hierarchy. Put differently, you can’t eat without teeth, and you can’t get a job at a Top 10 company without a flawless line of pearly whites. Or at least that’s the conception.

[10] If teeth serve such important functions, where do all these dental jokes come from? Everything is Freudian, and jokes are no exception. Among other ideas on humor, Freud presents a theory that jokes are structured like an inverted triangle: a straight line at the top and two sides coming down to a point. At each of the three points is a character: the teller, the witness, and at the bottom, the “butt.” I know I promised not to speak on behalf of the proctologists, so we’ll keep this brief.

[11] Looking at the language of jokes, especially ones that involve a butt, we see that the butt gets “sent up” or “knocked down a peg”. Up or down, there is social movement implicit in the work of a joke. According to Freud, a joke is serious and subversive—read another way, it works to elevate the teller and denigrate the butt.

[12] So I pose a question: why are we constantly denigrating dentists? It might be because they cause us pain, but more likely, it’s because they have a bizarre and special permission to probe one of our most personal anatomic spaces. We let dentists put needles, crowns and dentures, not to mention their hands, into a space that serves the dual function of nourishing our bodies and expressing our social status.

[13] More than just a highly sensitive observer, though, the dentist takes ownership of another person’s mouth. By extension, he or she has control over the oral functions that make the mouth such an important orifice: the ability to eat, the ability to communicate and to express, and, perhaps most important for our argument here, the dentist has control over the esthetics of the mouth, which dictate so much of how we understand each other, and how we understand ourselves. Imposing on the oral cavity in such a way gives the dentist a transgressive power over our mouths, and a strange ownership of a very intimate space. No wonder dentists make us anxious.

[14] [qualifies claim:] But there are doctors who do the same thing—cardiac surgeons, for example, invade and transgress, and probably most people would be more than a little anxious about having open-heart surgery. It would not, however, be a joking matter—a heart is among the few organs that are crucial for the very basis of life. Teeth on the other hand – well, who wants to admit that teeth are important? Certainly not as important as a heart, right?

[15] So we are anxious about the dentist smelling our breath or discovering bits of food stuck between our teeth, about having a smile that indicates social order, and, to further complicate matters, we are anxious about admitting all this. [= ultimate claim] Because teeth shouldn’t