CATEGORY 130 AUSTRALASIAN DENTIST REALITY BITES Jade Richardson Homo Sapien Versus Homo Surgically Enhanced Jade Richardson watches in cynical amazement as a new kind of human being emerges from medical surgeries all over the world. By Jade Richardson It’s a basic lie in psychology and in marketing that once human beings have their basic needs sorted, they will become happy and free to explore more creative ones. That is an utter deception, which your faithful columnist here is living proof of – as well as many of your clients. And which the explosion in dental aesthetics – which arguably validated the explosion in all sorts of ‘medical aesthetics’, currently splattering themselves all over the biological and psychological space – also proves. The fact is that our basic needs are never met. They are constantly added to by a culture hellbent on science, improvement, progress, fashion and advertising. Onmy present investigative assignment in Thailand, I receive, everyday, a far too up close and cringy inside view on all of this delivered straight to my phone every morning. Now that social media tech has infiltrated and brazenly set about exploiting all my needs, hopes and fears, perfectly tinkered to my precise age, demographic, location and budget, what I see every day, in horrible pastels and shudderingly intimate medical imagery, are ads by Thai businesses for every possible surgical intervention you can imagine. It started with the dentists. As I argue that it did, everywhere. The busy folk with the soft pink lighting and the carefully whitened skin tones, at various innovative sympathetic Bangkok dental hospitals let off rafts of clever Facebook ads as soon a Covid visa restrictions were lifted, promising soft fluffy experiences in their surgical chairs for the hundreds of thousands of us their algorithms have targeted as potential new clients. By the look of things, they are after the traveling and expatriate middle aged recovering or relocating in Thailand from post-Covid fear and inflation, in-coming tourists and the rapidly emerging Asian middle class, hungry for all the same things the middle class have made popular wherever they have flourished: braces, renovated kitchens with island benches and drop lighting, sporty-looking midlife men with surprisingly white smiles, and soft-focus women with sleek bodywork and pearly teeth. Dental aesthetics add that necessary finishing touch to the upwardly wonderful lifestyle. In Asia a fashionable mouth is an Absolute Essential to the all-vital ‘Look’, ensuring viability in the hyper-competitive dating, employment and increasingly vicious social hierarchies. Dental aesthetics here are matter-of-factly understood to be essential to social success for the upwardly aggressive. The ‘success’ a radiant mouth seems to imply, may also fend off the anxiety and discomfort of the inner voices whose concerns about where this might all be going must never pass the lips. Surely most new customers to the cosmetic surgery market are only there because they have to be – to keep up! If you can’t actually get your life on the upward trajectory for whatever reasons, you can certainly these days invest in looking like you have. The medical industry, at PROFESSIONAL DENTIST SUPPLIES - 3/8 NICOLE CLOSE BAYSWATER NORTH VIC AUSTRALIA - 03 9761 6615 - sales@profdent.com.au - ABN 69 088 275 576 WWW.PROFDENT.COM.AU The Original Aussie Teeth Whitening Changing Australian smiles for over 30 years #SUPPORTAUSTRALIAN
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