For the entire run of The White Lotus’s Season 3, people were talking about Aimee Lou Wood’s teeth. She has prominent teeth, which gives her a retro ‘70s beauty and I love that she’s never gone in for some bright, white fake teeth. She’s such a cutie and her teeth make her more striking and unusual. The commentary about Aimee’s teeth has been way too much for months though, and I have no idea why Saturday Night Live decided to pile on. SNL did a parody of The White Lotus called The White Potus. It could have been a solid, much-needed parody of the Republicans’ economic death spiral. Instead, they mocked Aimee Lou Wood’s teeth for no real reason. That part comes around the 2:30-mark, with Jon Hamm playing Robert Kennedy Jr.
That was such an unnecessary joke about Aimee in particular. Aimee Lou thought the same – she posted on her IG Stories, calling it “mean and unfunny.” A few hours later, she posted “I’ve had apologies from SNL.” You can see some of her IG Stories below. In interviews following the season finale of The White Lotus, she’s even said that she’d really like to stop talking about her teeth, and she doesn’t get the American obsession with talking about her teeth. I don’t get it either – like, I understand the comment when you first see her, like “oh, wow, she has interesting teeth!” But to keep going on and on about it is bizarre. Americans are never gonna beat the “obsessed with bright white fake teeth” allegations.
Photos courtesy of HBO/Avalon, Aimee’s IG and SNL/NBC.
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- Aimee Lou Wood in Season 3 Episode 5 of The White Lotus,Image: 981265497, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Fabio Lovino/HBO/Avalon
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- Aimee Lou Wood in Season 3 Episode 8 of The White Lotus,Image: 984721531, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: HBO/Avalon
Loved her and her teeth in Sex Education.
It is a choice you make as an adult to keep the gap in your teeth. Most folks like their teeth a clean as possible. I get twice a year cleaning.
Her teeth aren’t dirty. Are you suggesting she doesn’t see a dentist?
No one said anything about her teeth being dirty. If that’s what your comments are implying.
Gaps in your teeth don’t make them dirtier or more difficult to clean. Her smile is lovely.
You clean your teeth only twice a year? That’s gross. But hey, your choice!
By the exact same standard, you could say it’s a choice to have small breasts, or it’s a choice to not be a size 0.
“You’ve made a choice as an adult to not have major cosmetic work done” is a hell of a take.
I use to have a gap in my teeth when I was younger (in French we call them “happiness teeth”) and not a single dentist that I consulted said they were dirtier because of it.
I’m really sad that the adults in my family decided that it was better for me not to have the gap anymore, I really loved it.
I really don’t understand this belief that straight teeth = clean. If you think about it for two seconds you realize that it makes no sense, and yet here you are.
I caught the skit earlier, and am truly puzzled by how this part got green-lit in the first place. ALW has been clear about being self conscious about her teeth and having body dysmorphia, so it’s odd and cruel to single her out at all in this parody. It is punching down, as she said. Did it come from Sarah Sherman, a writer, Lorne, or someone with an axe to grind?
She’s right. It was unfunny and unnecessary. Lazy. She looks unique and beautiful.
I think this obsession with her teeth reflects Hollywood’s insecurities. Some actors and actresses are wondering right now if they should have kept their original teeth. The whole veneers process sounds nightmarish.
All of this, and the parody was making fun of the obsession with her teeth not her. Honestly the parody was absolute brilliance from beginning to end.
The parallels between the Ratkiff’s and the felon family were next level.
This is what I think, too. Imagine what a relief it would be for so many people to just be who they naturally are, looks-wise. The race towards some arbitrary ideal is crazy.
My old co-worker, who was naturally very beautiful, in recent years embraced a Mar-a-Lago type look with fillers and Botox and hair extensions. It was so dramatic that other old co-wrokers were chatting about it online. She posted a photo recently at her son’s college mom’s weekend and in the group photo she stood out like a sore thumb. All the other moms looked naturally middle aged (and super happy), while she posed hard with her hair and heels and immovable face. It’s sad that she just couldn’t age gracefully – and she’s not even in Hollywood so she doesn’t have that “excuse.” Social media has played a big part in messing with people’s self esteem, I guess.
I’m so glad she called them out on this.
I’m climbing back on my soap box to scream “bring back real teeth” into the void. Step back now if you’ve already heard this from me.
A year or so back my friend and I watched Legally Blond at the cinema and walked home saying how nice it was that people had actual human teeth back then. Now it’s so rare to see someone one screen who doesn’t have shiny white and perfectly even teeth. Sure get them straightened out and deal with any discolouration if it bothers you but it’s gone crazy.
My (NHS) dentist now emails me forms and surveys ahead of my check-up and one of the surveys was page after page of questions about ‘do you hate your teeth?’ ‘no but really, we’re sure you hate your teeth, do you?’ ‘we bet your teeth make you look funny, don’t you agree?’. Fortunately there was a free text box at the end so I was able to share my reaction to their questions.
This reminds me of my dermatologist’s office. I go for regular skin checks, and it’s clear to see that a large bulk of the practice’s business is cosmetic dermatology. My NP has not pushed Botox or similar on me, but the messaging in the waiting room and in their marketing materials is overt.
I can’t even GET an appt. with my actual dermatologist; he’s so busy doing cosmetic procedures. You first go through the PA for treatments, and SHE determines if it’s “serious” enough for the dr. to see it as well.
I am looking for another dermatologist, but I’m finding the offices here (Beverly Hills/LA) are all pretty much the same. Cosmetic procedures are pure profit for them (insurance *rarely* covers anything unless it’s skin cancer), so it’s way more lucrative for them/their time.
I wish SNL’s parody would be about a number of the BRF’s teeth who are taxpayer funded, yet have nasty(dirty) looking teeth(except Kate). Aimee Lou is embracing her teeth. They look clean. Tooth health is very important to overall health. Straight, crooked, whatever. Her teeth look taken care of. I brush my teeth twice a day. Floss once a day. Don’t have dental insurance. We pay to have our teeth cleaned twice a year.
Beautiful smile. She reminds me of one of my favorite models. Lauren Hutton.
https://people.com/style/lauren-hutton-used-morticians-wax-to-cover-her-gap-tooth/
Ths super white, chiclet teeth, veneer thing, has been pushed by American dentists for years because it’s a moneymaker for them. It’s all private practice in the US, so they aren’t just working for the good of the patient. Now we judge anyone who doesn’t have the ‘perfect’ image dentists pushed on us. Decades of marketing at its finest.
I agree with her.
This might be an American thing.
If your teeth are healthy and nice I don’t see why you should touch them.
I like normal (the kind you can meet in the streets, at the groceries etc.) beauty .
I watched the skit after seeing this mess. The whole skit was making fun of Trump administration and his lackeys. Then, at the end, punching down on an actress because of her teeth? It felt so random and mean. Do all the men on the show look like Chris Hemsworth? Why are you sh*tting on a woman who didn’t feel the need to get those awful veneers? It is bizarre. They also make fun of women who get too many plastic surgeries. Maybe, don’t sh*t on one with natural features, so others don’t feel the pressure to look perfect, while actors are allowed to look old, ugly and nobody bats an eye.
Disappointed in SNL, that no-one thought to stop this.
Ugh come on. I find her so beautiful.
I hate the Mr. Ed veneer slash chompers phase we are all in. It’s so distracting when you’re watching a movie set in the fucking renaissance period or whatever and everyone has veneers and fillers. I absolutely hate the trend it just adds to our whole collective look of we’re all blow up dolls with the same fucking face channeling bored camels or surprised birds. Our faces are really starting to look weird.
I’m in my 50s and constantly hear that I don’t look my age. I look my age! It’s the 20 and 30 somethings who look 50-60 cause they won’t stop messing with their faces and it ages them prematurely.
I seriously can’t tell anyone’s age anymore. When someone shows up on the scene like Aimee it’s a breath of fresh air. She’s a star – interesting and beautiful and she has real acting chops. I don’t want to see any more Kardashians on my screens. More real faces please.
Agree about the teeth – some people look like they can’t even close their mouths properly with their new veneers, it is so distracting.
I also can’t tell ages anymore. I said recently when someone asked me how old I thought our new neighbor was and I said she could be anywhere between 35 and 55.
Omg this is so true! 35-55 lol. I was talking with someone at the dermatologist and I could have sworn she was my age or older. She’s 29! She was there to “get some maintenance” She had so much filler in her face I could barely focus on what she was saying.
Oh no, that’s so sad that a 29-year-old thinks she needs fillers. Social media is really destroying us in more ways than one.
And to me, they look like they are wearing dentures (or worse, the fake dentures they use in the Dentu-clean type ads). I cannot understand who thinks this looks good.
It’s also really distracting when a performer who has had perfectly fine normal teeth for decades suddenly goes the giant blazing white chiclet route.
Colin Firth and Michael Douglas come to mind.
I was laughing so hard at this watching it live. Then it was like a record scratch seeing the Chelsea character parody. I was like, no that’s not funny or necessary. Took me out of the sketch.
I am glad they are sticking with James Austin Johnson version of Trump. And not bringing Alec back or the proposed Shane Gillis and thankfully Shane turned Lorne down.
Yes! Those are great examples. Why would you as a serious actor get this done? You’re supposed to get lost in the role – we are supposed to forget it’s you!
I don’t get it – for actors especially!
I’m surprised that a woman who speaks so openly of her self-consciousness & dysmorphia about her teeth didn’t / doesn’t get orthodontia. Invisaligns would straighten them without being obvious as typical braces are.
I do find the teeth distracting and no, “chiclets” are not a look I favor. It’s great if she likes them but she should expect that not everyone will share that opinion.
She’s under no obligation to, especially as “fixing” them is a painful, expensive and lengthy process. She’s not immune to succumbing to the TV and film industry’s stringent looks standards for women (she’s dropped a lot of weight between her first major role and her role on White Lotus) but teeth are not such a spur-of-the-moment, mindless or fast fix.
I’ve heard several doctors say that it can do a person with body dysmorphia good to ignore chatter or intrusive thoughts about fixing things that are perfectly acceptable both in their long term recovery and more immediate day-to-day lives.
Agreed, the only reason to change things would be if was leading to misalignment that made it harder to chew.
I love her and think she is fantastic but hey this is part of being a celebrity – you are going to get spoofed and charactured
The fact that this is even a story right now is baloney
Disagree – it absolutely should be a story, because its one thing to spoof, it’s another thing to mock. What message does that send to all the people who’s teeth are naturally like Aimee’s that don’t have the means to get them changed? that they’re not good enough, that they’re not taking care of themselves? And where does it stop – big noses fair game? Big foreheads? Curly hair? Size…..? Skin colour….. it gets problematic quickly.
We shouldn’t be commenting on people’s bodies, full stop.
The only way this type of commentary stops is by calling it out.
Worst part is, it would’ve been a perfectly good skit without the teeth thing. You know what makes me laugh? People with huge, fluorescent veneers.
I do find her teeth a little distracting, but she’s an excellent actress and her teeth make her more interesting. There’s nothing wrong with her teeth, it’s just a different aesthetic than we’re used to in the US, and it’s cruel for people to mock her for it. Maybe this unfortunate skit can spark a discussion about normalizing teeth that aren’t perfectly straight and blindingly white.
Because she has a different aesthetic I’m surprised she’s done well as an actress. I bet she used to be under a lot of pressure to change them. But now it makes her unique
yes, exactly. God forbid we see someone on our screens who hasn’t been cosmetically enhanced into a pre-formed mould that perfectly aligns with the beauty standards du jour.
It is mean to make fun of someone’s appearance. There are many reasons why someone might have crooked teeth. Above all, crooked teeth are a class marker – they couldn’t afford to straighten them. But also, why? Why straighten your teeth? I had extensive orthodontia and it caused massively receding gums. Why is there always this pressure on women, above all, to look perfect? Her teeth aren’t ruining her life. Imperfect teeth are a normal part of life. Laughing at her appearance, which cannot be “fixed” without pain that she may simply not wish to endure (certainly not simply for cosmetic reasons), IS mean. It’s dumb. It’s not funny.
I find American humour (e.g. comedies, sitcoms, barf) to generally be dumb and not funny at all, so there’s that.
” I find American humour (e.g. comedies, sitcoms, barf) to generally be dumb and not funny at all, so there’s that.”… ok. I would say I often feel the same, but then I remember — as an American — that there is actually a spectrum of humour, as you spell it here on the island, much like there is a spectrum of politics, journalism, music, art, theatre, etc…. There is highbrow and lowbrow, cheesy & ham-handed vs subtle & sophisticated, then there are categories like faux-sophisticated and over-the-top deliberately tacky. It’s like restaurants: some are deliberately tacky and loud so that you can take kids and not feel badly. Some are pretentious and overpriced with mediocre food. Some are genuine & authentically delightful because their aesthetic is rooted in a commitment to the part of the market they’re serving, whether highbrow or lowbrow. It’s sincere. Having said all that…. I don’t often find myself generalising about my adopted country (the UK) but if I were so inclined… I would say a lot of the humour runs the gamut between two bookends: faux-sophisticated, prematurely jaded, knowing in a way that comes across as self-absorbed and cloying; and puerile, childish, and slapstick. None of this bothers me. It’s just a relative world. I try to indulge in the differences. Not judge. But what I find fascinating is how many Celebitches have leapt to the defence of an actress targeted by an SNL sketch — which is pretty mild mockery, and effectively a back-handed compliment — in contrast to the vast number of British readers and “journalists” who went batsh*t over Southpark’s sketch about Meghan & Harry…. Which was to misread the entire culture, in a way: Southpark is, to put it mildly, not a cultural bellwether in the US. LOL. Even if it were, the most satire-heavy nation on earth seemed to have momentarily lost its ability to recognise a perfect case in point. You might even call it humourless. Yes, teeth are a class marker, and yes, Americans expect to spend their disposable income on dentistry, like healthcare. No, British teeth aren’t as infamous as they were years ago when Christopher Hitchens accepted a dare from his editor at Vanity Fair to have his teeth “done” gratis, if only to document the process for American readers. But I also find it interesting that Aimee’s wounded feelings are so prized and so precious whereas Meghan’s feelings about, frankly, much worse abuse, and vindictive taunting, are taken as negligible. A double standard, methinks. Intriguing!
When I was a teen, my lower teeth were overlapping a bit and my upper teeth were straight but a bit forward, and I had 4 wisdom teeth coming in that were going to make it all worse.
It was decided that I should get braces and have surgery to take out the wisdom teeth.
Fine – except the orthodontist decided
to prep my teeth for the braces by putting spacers in *before* the wisdom teeth were taken out. I got massive headaches and could feel the pressure of all my teeth being pushed forward (they couldn’t go back because of the 4 molars coming in)
Logically, it didn’t make sense – why push my teeth further out of alignment, cause me pain AND make it so I’d have to wear braces longer, when he could just wait 2 months for the molars to be gone and then start? I asked him that at my first follow up.
He basically patted me on my head, declared girls don’t understand these complicated things and stuck to his plan. When I got home I proceeded to take every freakin’ spacer out of my teeth (not easy and very painful) and announced to my mom I wasn’t ever going back to that guy. Thankfully she said ok. Went through with the WT extraction with an oral surgeon.
And here I sit, a couple of decades later with a very healthy set of teeth, that look pretty much the same as they did way back when. Are they Hollywood perfect? No. Do I care? No. They’re healthy and functional and that’s fine.
Not surprised at all that SNL went the cheap route. Such an unfunny show.
Similar to George-Mae Jagger and Freddie Mercury, distinctive. And she is beautiful.
Also Jane Birkin who was adorable. Aimee Lou is a super actress. We had the good fortune to see her play a recovering drug addict in People, Places and Things when this play went on tour in 2017. We knew we were seeing a star when she held the audience in the palm of her hands.
@kelleybelle
It’s a bad comparison. You still have gaps, and this is about a crooked bite, not gaps. George-Mae Jagger has straight, white, nice teeth, with gaps, but they are still nice, straight teeth. Aimee Lou Wood’s is closer to Freddie, they both have a crooked bite and front teeth pushed forward. They are not vertical, but at an angle. Freddie had even more and the entire upper front, and Aimee looks like she has mostly first teeth. It doesn’t look nice, you still have first teeth on your lower lip, and as you say, you produce more saliva. This is corrected with braces, she would have had gaps anyway. They can also be corrected, but why.
Loved the skit, hated the part about Chelsea/Aimee Lou. They should’ve lampooned Cheryl Hines chasing after RFK jr, it was right there for the taking.
O/T I loved that on this snl episode Lizzo wore tee shirts that said “Tariffied” and “Black women were right.”
I disagree with Kaiser, because it’s going to extremes. There are many alternatives between a blinding Hollywood smile and an obvious malocclusion. It’s not about veneers or eliminating gaps, but about an obvious malocclusion that disfigures it, makes it difficult to close the mouth because you have to “put” your lips on the teeth, and when open, the first teeth rest on the lower lip and looks like a rabbit.
Are pushed forward, probably because she constantly sucks her thumb while her teeth are growing. A regular brace and even slightly verticalizing the first teeth will be enough. The gaps will remain, the character of the teeth will not change.
He clearly doesn’t want to do it, he has the right, but he has to get used to small jokes, because with his mouth open it doesn’t look good, especially from the profile.
I do think a part of it is the constellation of her teeth, her nose, and her brows. Those are overwhelmingly the first three things that Hollywood changes, they have absurdist standards of beauty and uniformity for them.
And here she is with a nose that, while perfectly normal, is obviously not ‘done up’ into that weirdly perfect shape that everybody seems to have. Teeth that aren’t a perfect unbroken wall of blinding white. Eyebrows that are not plucked and shaped to the gods.
And what are the features that Hollywood uses and exaggerates whenever they ‘uglify’ a character? Teeth prosthetics that are snaggly, gappy, and misaligned with the two front teeth being much larger usually, they throw on a prosthetic nose that is usually larger but always bumpy, and they give them massive bushes for eyebrows.
Like, it’s obvious that this actress is a lovely woman. These three features on her face are objectively normal and look good, even if you just look at them in isolation. But those are three facial features that Hollywood is clearly hypersensitive and hypercritical about, and hers are about two steps outside of what Hollywood considers the ideal.
I watch a lot of British telly and I have to say, I find the dearth of ‘real faces’, with lines and crooked teeth and natural hair not only refreshing but necessary for my mental health. I see myself reflected. American telly is great, lots of talent on display FOR SURE but I find the uniform perfection of teeth and beachy waves and tiny waists exhausting and frankly, forgettable. A lot of actors disappear into their appearance. I grew up in the ’80s and 90s and I am so thankful I never felt this same intense pressure young women feel today to prevent the *natural* process of aging and fix everything. Your face is not the problem. Society is.
I so agree with every word you wrote!
For professional joke-writers it was just so LAZY. I’d expect a seventh-grader to take the lowest hanging fruit possible, not someone whose job it is to create comedy for national television. Offensive? Definitely. Uncalled for? Absolutely. But the hackiness is what I truly can’t get over.
It’s a shame that they had to include that because otherwise it was a pretty brilliant parody, including the part with her in it (Jon Hamm did a great job as the unhinged RFK Junior).
I got the sense they were not so much mocking her teeth as poking fun at the internet’s obsession with her teeth. I watched the whole season and it was a topic the entire time, with the consensus being that they were cute, that she was beautiful and adorable, that who cared if she didn’t have perfect veneers? It was refreshing, etc. Unfortunately the execution was poor and that’s not how it came across.
That was a misfire by SNL but I still liked the parody. Glad they apologized, though.