Chelsea
The blinding, bathroom-tile smile had a good run: here's what's replacing it, and why the best new teeth are the ones nobody notices.

As Chelsea, the Sex Education star brought her gap-toothed grin to Season 3 of The White Lotus, and viewers were smitten. When Saturday Night Live parodied her with a giant set of prosthetic teeth in April 2025, Wood called the sketch 'mean and unfunny,' fans rallied behind her, and she later said she'd received apologies from the show.

Earlier this year she hosted SNL UK and joked about the whole saga in a promo, which might be the most graceful comeback a set of teeth has ever made.

Somewhere in all of that, the beauty conversation flipped. Gappy, a little crooked and very real became the look to want.

Goodbye, Chiclets

Cosmetic dentists have clocked the shift too. Several told NewBeauty that the era of identical 'chiclet' teeth is winding down, with patients now asking for work that looks polished but still human.

The backlash had been building for years, largely thanks to 'Turkey teeth.' The nickname stuck to a wave of bargain smile makeovers in which perfectly healthy teeth were filed down into little pegs and capped with crowns. The results looked great on Instagram for about five minutes. Then, for some patients, came the sensitivity, the infections and the root canals.

No More Shark Teeth

In an era of AI and digital planning, dentistry has become advanced enough to fabricate try-on smiles with 3D printers and image simulations so patients can preview the proposed appearance before their final restorations are fitted. 'The try-on teeth resemble the finished prosthesis with astonishing precision', explains a spokesperson from One Life Dental, a clinic focused on advanced implant dentistry in Turkey. 'Thanks to modern technology, it's to the millimetre close.'

As to the question of risk, the clinic says careful planning is essential. 'A proper implant treatment starts with a cone beam CT scan, which builds a 3D model of your jaw. The scan tells us where each implant can safely go, and that decides how natural the final teeth can look,' says Dr. Serkan, chief oral and maxillofacial surgeon at One Life Dental in Istanbul.

That scan feeds a digital treatment plan. Many clinics then 3D-print a surgical guide from it, so each implant lands more closely where the software planned it. Full-arch implant surgery can mean bone grafts, sinus lifts and working millimetres from a nerve. That's the day job of oral and maxillofacial surgeons, the specialists trained to operate on the jaw and face.

So for full mouth dental implants in Turkey, where dental tourism has boomed, a surgeon may be a good choice, especially for more complex cases involving zygomatic implants.

Designed Digitally, Finished by Hand

But how can patients get a smile like Aimee Lou, perfectly imperfect, looking entirely natural? With CAD/CAM technology, technicians design the new smile digitally around the patient's face, lips and bite. A milling machine then carves it out of a solid block of zirconia or ceramic. This process has by now become precise to within a millimetre.

The best labs do one more thing a computer can't manage alone: they make the teeth slightly imperfect. A technician adds a hint of translucency at the edges, keeps the shade closer to ivory than printer paper and makes sure the front teeth aren't identical twins. That's the difference between teeth that look like teeth and teeth that look like a product.

The New Status Symbol

The old goal was a smile that announced itself. The new one is a smile nobody comments on at all, unless it's to say you look well rested.

Or, as Wood put it after that SNL sketch, she has 'big gap teeth, not bad teeth.' Whether your smile came from your parents, a surgeon or a bit of both, that's the energy to aim for.