Context: When Black Twitter exploded into popular culture in the early aughts, what was once underground entered the mainstream. Corporations and creators alike started chasing the way Black folks dress, talk, and act in an attempt to signal progressive values. This shift explains the increasing popularity of grills, tooth gems, and models with gapped teeth, all of which are commonly associated with Black folks. Concept, photo editing, copywriting, and layout by me.
Approach: This satirical zine is inspired by the way A/B testing flattens humans into a series of inputs, showing models whose traits (like gapped teeth) have been cut out, remixed, and fed into an algorithm. This visual reimagination of The New York Times article “Helen, with the Gold Teeth” deconstructs the commodification of Black culture by tracing how gapped teeth have gone from derided to desired.
Me when I was about 2 or 3 years old.
Haters will be disappointed to know that
2 sets of braces could not get rid of this gap.
2 sets of braces could not get rid of this gap.
Seeing gap-toothed models in a mainstream publication like The New York Times was wild. I couldn’t believe people were acting like Day 1 Fans! But at a time when every strategist is just ripping AAVE off TikTok, I shouldn’t be surprised.
This fetishization of gaps, tooth gems, etc. is just the latest iteration of Mayflower Descendents’ obsession with cosplaying as a marginalized identity—both compelled and repelled by otherness.