This tall dark, handsome drink of water walks into the room and literally every available female (and a few married ones) start sizing him up from the polished shoes to the fresh haircut. He is rugged with nice, broad shoulders and a body that screams personal training.

His threads are

not flashy but they certainly are not cheap and while he sports no crazy ‘Mr T’

jewellery, his watch signifies understated taste and class. He’s textbook sharp

but as he turns around to speak to the waiter he flashes a smile and you see he

has a gap in his teeth. You pause to assess how you feel about it.

Gap teeth. It’s

cute on babies and children taking school pictures. On adults, not so much.

Some years ago

on America’s Next Top Model, acontestant made it all the way to the finals and was told if she wanted to makeit big, she would have to close the gap in her teeth otherwise she wouldn’t betaken seriously. At first she was adamant she loved her gap but in the endbowed to the pressure and filled in the space. The episode drew widespread (getit?) condemnation from viewers who insisted she was perfectly imperfect and didnot need to close anything other than her ears to the naysayers.

When we look

around today, most people with gaps tend to fill them in. The most noticeable exceptions

are former athlete turned TV host Michael Strachan and former boxer Mike Tyson.

Both men are successful in their own right and when you have money, people tend

to overlook whatever they would otherwise see as a flaw. The bottom line is gap

teeth are sexy for some and less so for others but at the end of the day what

is most important is that the teeth are clean and the breath fresh like morning

dew. In order words a person is uglier when there is a gap in their integrity

than their mouth.