WHY ARE THERE SO FEW SMILES IN OLD PHOTOGRAPHS? THE BAD TEETH THEORY.

WHY ARE THERE SO FEW SMILES IN OLD PHOTOGRAPHS? Robinson Meyer in this article in the Atlantic asks: “Why Didn’t People Smile in Old Portraits?” I posed the question to Mary Jane, and she said that she had always thought that one factor was that the subjects were afraid to show their bad teeth. Meyer links to this article by Nicholas Jeeves, in the Public Domain Review. Jeeves rejects the bad teeth theory because “bad teeth were so common that this was not seen as necessarily taking away from someone’s attractiveness”. Jeeves tells about Lord Palmerston who was considered “strikingly handsome” despite missing some teeth. Palmerston only became self-conscious about opening his mouth after he got false teeth and worried that they might fall out.