Analysing that celebrity smile

If eyes are the windows to the soul, then a smile is definitely a barometer of your thoughts. Ever wanted to know what celebrities are really thinking behind their dazzling white porcelain veneers? Well now you can, as natural toothpaste firm Aloe Dent has asked psychotherapist Emma Gold to analyse just that. And you may be able to recognise yourself among the categories identified – are you a laughing Lily or a dazzling Angelina?

1. Laughing smile like Lily Allen…

While the most typical smile exposes only the upper teeth, a laughing smile exposes both sets, making it the broadest smile of all, as well as a sign laughter is not far behind. Smiling is contagious and a laughing smile will light up the room and also provide a good facial workout using all 80 face muscles. Interestingly, while this is the most joyful smile, we make little or no eye contact during it. When Lily Allen’s happy she shows the genuine article, so it’s no surprise Smile was the name of her biggest hit.

2. Dazzling smile like Angelina Jolie…

A dazzling smile encompasses your whole face and is characterised by a wide curving mouth with lips parted to expose upper teeth and shining, sparkling eyes. Genuine smiles are by far the most obvious as they are generated unconsciously, so are automatic. When people feel pleasure, signals pass through the part of the brain that processes emotion. This makes the muscles in the mouth move, while those that raise the cheeks contract, causing the eyes to crease up and the eyebrows to dip slightly. Angelina has the perfect dazzling beam, although if waking up to Brad Pitt doesn’t automatically slap a smile on your face, what will…

3. Faking it like Katie Holmes…

Fake smiles can be performed at will, but there are giveaway signs. Smile researchers talk about the false “oblong smile”, which describes the shape made by the mouth when the lips are drawn back fully from the teeth into a kind of polite grimace. The eyes lack the warmth of expression that comes with a true beamer and fake smiles stay fixed in position while a real one flashes on and off. So, sorry Katie, you’re going to have to do better than crinkling your eyes up and hoping we’ve not noticed you’re smiling through gritted teeth.

4. Toothy Grin like Madonna…

While other identikit celebs might have rushed to fix a gap between their front teeth, Madonna is bold enough not just to own it, but to flaunt it too. Perhaps she’s heard of the significance that this gap holds for women? Some regard this gap as the sign of Venus, the goddess of love, and being gap-toothed was seen as a sign of a strongly sexual nature in the Middle Ages, as told in The Wife of Bath’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer. In some African tribes, having a gap in your front teeth is the sign of wisdom and in France they call it “teeth of happiness”. A wise move from a style goddess? That sounds like Madonna.

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