Sex Education and The White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood called out Saturday Night Live for mocking her teeth in a recent sketch – and criticised our wider obsession with them
Over the weekend, Sex Education and The White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood criticised US comedy show Saturday Night Live for a sketch that mocked her teeth – which she called “mean and unfunny”.
The sketch, titled The White Potus, reimagined season three of Mike White’s The White Lotus with characters from the Trump administration. The only character not reimagined was Wood’s character Chelsea, portrayed by SNL cast member Sarah Sherman. When Sherman appears as Chelsea, she’s shown in conversation with Jon Hamm, playing RFK Jr in the role of Walton Goggins’ character Rick. Hamm’s RFK Jr makes a comment about wanting to remove fluoride from American tap water, to which Sherman responds, while wearing exaggerated prosthetic teeth: “Fluoride? What’s that?” The gag insinuates that Wood’s teeth are the result of poor dental hygiene.
Wood took to Instagram to respond: “Whilst in honest mode – I did find the SNL thing mean and unfunny”. She added: “Such a shame cuz I had such a great time watching it a couple weeks ago. Yes, take the piss, that’s what the show is about, but surely there’s a cleverer, more nuanced, less cheap way?”
The fluoride line was particularly baffling to Wood and viewers alike. “I have big gap teeth, not bad teeth,” she wrote. “The rest of the skit was punching up, and I/Chelsea was the only one punched down on.” The joke draws on a classist trope that British people – especially working-class people – have “bad teeth”. This lazy stereotype crops up constantly in American pop culture, and ignores the fact that the UK has been, and still is, facing a full-blown dental crisis that disproportionately affects poorer communities.
Beyond the classism, the sketch reinforced Wood’s long-standing anxiety around people’s fixation on her teeth. In an interview with GQ, she said she’s proud that her teeth have become a symbol of “rebellion and freedom”, but admitted, “the whole conversation is just about my teeth, and it makes me a bit sad because I’m not getting to talk about my work.” She continued: “They think it’s nice because they’re not criticising… but I don’t know, if it was a man would we be talking about it this much? It’s still going on about a woman’s appearance.”
Wood has a point. It’s great that people are beginning to accept that real teeth – crooked, gapped or uneven – are perfectly fine, and that there’s no need to file them down for veneers. But the level of attention her appearance receives is undeniably strange. As The White Lotus aired, there was a new piece about her teeth every other week – and barely any about her actual performance.
That said, the gender question is more complicated. Her co-star Walton Goggins, who plays Rick, has also been the subject of fascination for his appearance, particularly his receding hairline. While the show aired, the Slate ran a piece titled, “His hair is greasy. His eyes are bulging. I think I’m in love”. Soon after, The Telegraph declared that receding hairlines were sexy again, thanks to Goggins. Again, much of the internet chatter focused on his looks, not his acting.
Our cultural obsession with appearance isn’t surprising. We live in an intensely visual world where looks often feel like everything. But at some point, we need to be normal about how people look. Even when we praise those who resist beauty standards or reject cosmetic surgery, we need to remember: hair, receding or not, is just hair. Teeth, gapped, crooked, or straight, are just teeth. Nothing more, nothing less. People have value far beyond what they look like.