system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Brits and bad teeth. History of a stereotype 

Everyone knows the stereotype, but where did it come from? British people have the best dental hygiene in the world, so is the stereotype one of opposites. Maybe we once had awful teeth and now we are over compensating. Where did the stereotype come from?
gpt
It's a stereotype that originated in America. In the early parts of the 20th century, aesthetic dentalwork like braces and teeth-bleaching became absolutely required for Hollywood actors, in the classical era where the studios cultivated an image of glamour and perfection -- Hollywood being America's cultural representative to the rest of the world -- and as such they became pretty common for even ordinary middle-class people. By the 50s, it became just assumed that if your teeth were crooked, you'd get braces to fix it. Fixing crooked or stained teeth became a medical issue to Americans.

This didn't happen in the UK, or in fact in *most* countries. As you said, the British actually have quite good oral hygiene. But British actors and celebrities didn't cultivate the same Hollywood image of glamour, and so the aesthetics associated with that culture didn't become standard. People went to dentists to fix cavities and infections, but braces and bleach were considered a part of the *aesthetic* field, akin to botox or  collagen in modern times. While the Americans were mocking the British in their comedies for having crooked teeth, Britons and Australians were mocking Americans in theirs for being vain and effeminate enough to bleach their mouth and don braces.

Both of these things have faded in recent years, both as Britain started consuming more Hollywood culture, and as less-glamorous aesthetics like rock, punk, and hiphop music and gritty realistic cinema became the new hotness in the 70s and beyond.