2026
Outside Bones: A Meditation On Teeth
categories: death and dying
I don’t often love other people’s photos of me. When I take my own photos, I know which angles don’t accentuate my weak chin, my big forehead, my weirdly enormous nostrils. Mostly, I don’t smile. Partially vanity because I feel like I look like a derpy fool with weird teeth, partially in service of retaining some enigmatic aura, which is dumb because I am, in fact, a derpy fool with weird teeth.
But two weeks ago in Philadelphia, standing in front of LOVE with Yvan while our friends snapped pictures, I just grinned unthinkingly. It was a beautiful day, I was with people I adored, and I was having a fantastic time. I had no control over what my face was doing, how my mouth was moving. I was just feeling a lot of things. And my face reflects that! And I actually love that photo.
I bring this up because for Rue Morgue #230 (May/June 2026), I dedicated an entire column to obsessing about teeth. Teeth in horror films. Teeth as a site of body modification and vampire aesthetics. As memento mori. Teeth as the thing we pay thousands of dollars to control, straighten, beautify, perfect, and fit in– or elsewhere, other people are paying to get permanent fangs, to become a different kind of beautiful, to perhaps stand out.
In 2019 or so, I finally broke down and got Invisalign…something I’d said I would never do. I meant it when I said it. But I was so self-conscious about my teeth and had been for years, since I was a little girl. So when I had the means (I used my Art of the Occult advance), I did it anyway. And when they came off, I felt incredible! Invincible! I had straight teeth!
But a few years later, despite the fact that I diligently wear my retainer and have never skipped a single night…they’re drifting back. Slowly, inevitably, creeping back toward the snaggledy jankiness they naturally want to be. After all that work and pain and money! It sucks. Maybe I should have just gotten fangs instead.
Anyway. Teeth, man! I wrote about my obsessions and anxiety around it, and maybe you’ll want to see what I had to say. Read the full column in Rue Morgue #230 (available now at newsstands).
