Teeth (was NEW CANON)

[davewitley]

Erin wrote:

> Gaaah! No one likes that question except me! Well, I don't care.
> It's my question, I'm keeping it on there, and I'm asking it. None
> of the rest of you have to. So neener neener neener.

No, I understand your approach and don't want you to withdraw the 
question.  The point is, information on the context may make people 
decide that questions are more or less likely to get a useful or 
illuminating answer, and so help in selecting them.
 
> I refuse to believe that JKR takes the bad teeth for granted. If 
she
> did, she wouldn't even mention them, they'd just be... taken for
> granted and not mentioned. And even if she actually somehow did end
> up answering the question (a miniscule chance) and said that she
> hadn't thought about it much before, well, possibly it would wake
> her up to the fact that her American fans do consider it unusual 
and
> horrible and make her think twice before saddling another character
> with them. And that would make it worthwhile in my book.

Interesting.  The gulf is more than I supposed, especially as you 
more or less equated 'bad' teeth with poor hygiene in your pervious 
post.  To me describing Karkaroff's teeth as yellow may indicate 
that he smokes (I think only Dudley for sure smokes out of all the 
characters), but it's just description.  Snape, hair, dark, teeth, 
yellow; Karkaroff, hair, grey, teeth, yellow.

I don't believe anyone's teeth are described as 'bad' anywhere in 
canon.  Grawp's are described pejoratively.  IIRC, the merpeople 
have green teeth.

But you seem to be making the mental leap from 'yellow' to 'bad' 
with no consciousness of making it.

As for Hagrid, people here do tend to wear false teeth if they have 
gaps, but I think we have to wait until the next book to be sure he 
has rejected that option.  The WW being what it is, he may have 
difficulty getting treatment on the grounds that his teeth are 
inapproproately large.

David, wondering when dyed teeth will be fashionable