"American teeth" ... is Lara Bingle's ultra-bright smile too white? There's always warnings about going ''too far'' with teeth whitening; to avoid at all costs ''American'' teeth.
They should hold up David Hasselhoff and his new girlfriend as examples of what not to do. Their teeth are so whiter-than-white on the pages of Hello! magazine that it makes their whole heads look superfluous. All you can see is the teeth.
Veneers of perfection? ... David Hasselhoff and Kayley Roberts. In other words, the Hoff can be excused for the plastic smile.
But his girlfriend Hayley Roberts is 31 and is Welsh and is not a celebrity.
She lives with her parents in a ''modest terraced house'' in the Welsh valleys, according to Hello!, and met David while having a drink with her sister at a bar in Cardiff when he was in town for Britain's Got Talent auditions.
He liked the look of her. ''A ringer for Farrah in her youth,'' he said. Now Farrah Fawcett had a wide smile with American white teeth. Maybe he booked Hayley into a dental laser clinic for some urgent work before they frolicked in red Baywatch swimsuits on the beaches of Malibu for Hello! and us. Hayley, David, you've gone too far. Your teeth not only don't look real, they dominate your heads.
Admittedly my experience of teeth whitening to date is nil. It is something I thought I'd get around to when I needed to (like before an interview with Hello! on the beaches of Malibu with a celeb 28 years my senior).
I would welcome an invitation to try it. I imagine perusing a colour chart going ''no, too white... closer... yes, that's the new-improved natural look I'm after!''. (Is that how it works?)
In the meantime I've been using some at-home whitening aids that I know will not (cannot) make my teeth too white and don't involve any sort of icky night mouthguard and bleach.
Pearl Drops toothpolish has been around forever - Mum used to use it in the Seventies - and now it's been reformulated ''intensive'' ($8.99) to ''help restore natural whiteness''. It works as a stain remover - good for smokers and red wine imbibers. I'm neither but being a good Melburnian, I do drink a lot of coffee.
It's used like a normal toothpaste but I use it after my normal toothpaste and I've been using it on the Spinbrush Sonic battery-operated toothbrush. This vibrates at a touch of a button. It doesn't do the roundy-round pulsating action of my $250-plus Oral B number but then it is $19.99. Drops and brush combination has made my teeth Australian white.
Do you whiten your teeth? How? Have you ever gone too far, like Hasselhoff and friend? What's the best method for a brighter smile?
