Different Approach To Dentistry In The Papers
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- Published: Tuesday, 07 February 2023 07:43
- Written by Peter Ingle
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There was a time when newspaper stories about dentistry tended to be rather predictable. They were usually restricted to greedy dentists, unnecessary treatment, and high costs. Then in the early 2000s two new distinct stories appeared.
One was about queues to register and the other was the arrival of dentistry as a lifestyle choice, with stories of veneers, smile make overs and celebrity smiles.
Post pandemic the access crisis has dominated, often with lurid tales of DIY dentistry, now interspersed with stories about “Turkey teeth,” when the dream of cheap cosmetic dentistry abroad has gone wrong.
Most of the more lurid reports tend to be in what are often deprecatingly referred to as the redtops, and the UK’s largest circulating paper, the Daily Mail, which also comes in for a good deal of criticism. Towards the other end of the spectrum, satirising the The Guardian, is a long established tradition in some quarters, and a recent article on dentistry may not have won it many friends in practices.
Zoe Williams is a longstanding writer for the Guardian and covers lifestyle and wellness as well as politics. Under the headline “Dentistry is in crisis – and I have an alarmingly wobbly tooth” she manages to cover all three of her domains.
We learn that Zoe’s dentist is, “a cool slightly anarchic Greek dentist, whose disappointment I probably deserve.” She reflects that she should enjoy seeing her dentist because she loves her, notes that she has had a tooth extracted before, and in confessional mode that, “again the root cause was my own negligence.” Warming to her theme, she declares extractions “worse than having a C-section” and has a “distinct recall that the dentist (a different one) had his knee on my chest.”
Moving to her political brief she explains that a large part of her current dentists appeal is that she has “a lot of hardcore left wing opinions you don’t normally encounter in a dentist. According to her, “The primacy of hygiene in the profession seems to attract Conservatives to it.” Readers can only assume that Zoe’s research before putting fingers to keyboard did not include a few minutes browsing dental twitter.
When it comes to deciding the fate of her tooth, it becomes a political issue. “The tooth is both supporting and compromising the two teeth on either side, so it can neither be left in, or taken out. It’s like a metaphor for a thruple gone bad, or for a Conservative government and the beleaguered nation around it.”
Reference is also made to the difficulty in accessing an NHS dentist, and that NHS charges can be beyond the means of those patients that can get an appointment. Indeed, she reflects, her musings about her dental visits are a “first world problem.”
The article does not make clear if Zoe sees her firebrand dentist under the NHS or privately. It does finish with a line that ensures readers will not need to check the masthead to remember which paper they are reading, “You can’t philosophise at the dentist’s. It’s pretentious”
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