What the F Are You Smiling At?

I thought I had it with Invisalign. All those ads of happy, little Invisalign wearers smiling from ear-to-ear. Looking so perfect with their already aligned teeth. Newsflash to marketing reps in charge of the Invisalign account--find some models who at least look like they need Invisalign, morons! Maybe someone like these people. Just sayin'. It's kind of like ads for Workout World featuring skinny people with perfect bodies. Um, no. Show me a photo or video of someone more out of shape than me if you want me to get motivated to join your Perfect Body Factory. Something that makes me say, "Tsk. I can do better than that. Just watch!" Instead, those ads always seem to say, "Don't even try it, loser. You can't win against Mr. and Mrs. Perfect Body." But, I digress.

Anywho, as I said above, I thought I had seen enough with Invisalign popping up every time I had to search for braces information. I did not think the competition could get more fierce. I had no idea that there was another product out there that sounds even more fabulous than Invisalign. I was dumbfounded beyond dumbfounding that there could be something even more perfect, whose ads feature more perfect people, with more perfect teeth than those found in the ads of that which can no longer be named.

But, while checking up on what's new on the Orthodontic beat,  I came across this. There, emblazoned on the home page of this freak of nature called the Damon System, is the question, "Why settle for Invisalign?" Well, for starters, because you CAN! Unlike me, whose ortho said that there is no way Invisalign will work with my god awful crooked teeth given that they would have to make so many trays for my mouth that they would deplete the world's supply of aligners. Duh! I guess that is not what they meant. What they meant was "Suck it, wire-and-bracket brace wearers! There's something better out there than Invisalign!"

But I'm not so sure. Despite the cute dirty blonde, smiling seductively at the Damon System logo as she twirls the tips of her hair in a flirtatious manner, I am doubtful of this product's advantageous claims. For starters, there's still a wire involved. And as clear as they think this wire may be, I can still see it! So what if they don't require rubber bands? (Can't wait to get these, by the way, and have one shoot across the room during an important business meeting.) So what if they are "self-ligating?" How many patients actually know what self-ligating means? Drats! Thinking I had outsmarted the Google, I did a quick search of "self ligating" in order to prove that the top hits would be about restriction enzyme cut-plasmids with compatible sticky ends closing back on themselves, thus screwing up your cloning experiments, only to find 463, 000 hits, with about 462,986 directly referencing braces. Good grief. Just when I thought it couldn't get much worse than wanting to punch the cheery, happy, smiling girl that pops in her Invisaligns at work around the same time I am picking my lunch out of my brackets, along came Damon. One more year. One. More. Year.