Growing up, I had a pretty straight smile with a small gap between my two front teeth. As a result, and to the relief of my parents wallet, I didnt have to get braces in grade school like so many of my peers.

Unfortunately, my severely impacted wisdom teeth wreaked havoc on the straightness of my smile years later just as my dentist warned me they would. In college I had my wisdom teeth removed, and one year ago I decided to embark on a teeth-straightening journey with clear aligners to reclaim the smile that once was.

As I began this journey, I was skeptical. Not only was I apprehensive about wearing plastic retainers 24/7, but I was also worried that Id be pressured to close my gap a feature of my smile that I had grown quite fond of.

And so when the time came to take virtual molds of my mouth, I asked the orthodontist if I could keep the gap as is. She looked at me so curiously that I had to assume that this was one of the first times shed ever received this request. So I explained to her the cultural significance of having the gap in Nigeria and other African nations.

In Yoruba, my parents native language, the tooth gap is fondly referred to as j. It is seen as a symbol of beauty and wealth , especially for women-identifying individuals in many African cultures so much so that some may undergo procedures to artificially create the desired diastema.

Some of the people that I grew up with in Nigeria would even opt to get the gap surgically, at the cost of chronic headaches, says Amaka Uzoigwe, a physician who now lives in New York. She points to one small study out of Nigeria that found 34% of its participants had undergone cosmetic procedures to artificially create the diastema.

After getting a little cultural context, my orthodontist emphatically supported my decision to keep my maxillary midline diastema, or MMD the medical term for a tooth gap. With a mini dental ruler, her assistant measured my 1 millimeter gap, wrote DO NOT CLOSE DIASTEMA in all caps, and sent these instructions to the clear aligner company. I automatically felt more comfortable at that point.

So, one might wonder, how do MMDs occur? According to Dr. Wunmi Oni, a pediatric dentist in Pennsylvania, the gap can form due to dental conditions such as an oversize frenum and habits like sucking ones thumb or tongue. However, she points out that many diastemas are not pathological; theyre simply a heritable characteristic. A genetic trait that extends throughout bloodlines, the MMD is common in those who currently reside on the African continent.

My father [told] me that all members of our family cherish their gaps and [that] it is viewed as a prized characteristic, says Brenda Awuah, a resident of Nashville, Tennessee, and the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants. Each generation of my family has this trait.

Although the MMD may be sought-after for many people in African countries, its often looked down upon in Western nations. The authors of a paper in one scientific journal state that the maxillary midline diastema represents an esthetic and psychological impairment and distress for patients seeking orthodontic treatment. In other words, its a physical flaw that needs to be fixed.

Many Black people who grew up in Western countries have unfortunately faced ridicule over their gap, since the characteristic is at odds with deep-seated Eurocentric beauty standards. I must acknowledge my own gap privilege that exempt me from getting too much ridicule about my MMD; it was likely because my own gap is fairly petite, still sitting at 1 millimeter. I know that several of my peers with more pronounced gaps face a lot of negativity I spoke to several of them.

Mariama Ibrahim, a resident of Durham, North Carolina, who is the daughter of Nigerian and Panamanian immigrants, was bullied for having a gap. She routinely heard comments such as you look like a train can go through your mouth and are you missing a tooth?