Adolescence: the sour taste of resin on your tongue, the cutting pain of steel in your mouth.

Smile: even when it hurts.

Brace yourself: the gap between your childhood days and years of teenage angst is closing up as fast as the gap between your two front teeth.

Pearls: perfect, pretty, pompous,

precious, proper, pure, privileged.

Dental appointments: mental disappointments

Before: words feel slippery on the tongue.

After: teeth feel slippery on the tongue.

Brace Yourself

is a series of work inspired by my experience wearing dental braces and devices throughout my adolescent years, from age 10 to 17.   

With a severe diastema and overbite, I was privileged to have parents that could financially support the years of dental work it would take to straighten my pearly whites. 

Time spent at the orthodontist was in tandem with my transition between childhood and adulthood, when smiling in itself became an act of defiance against the growing pains I was experiencing. 

Although my braces were eventually removed just before my senior year of high school, the stain of perfectionism they left on my personality never fully came out.