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This is Planet Money from

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NPR.

0:21

It was a sunny Saturday in Lubbock, Texas, when

0:24

the accident happened. happened. Rianne Jones

0:26

was 11 and had just watched a soapbox

0:29

derby race on TV.

0:30

And of course, being 11, I got it into

0:32

my head that we just had to build one and maybe we'd

0:35

push each other. Rianne and her friend

0:37

found this old vegetable crate and decided

0:39

to put some wheels on it. So they crouched

0:41

down in her driveway, started pulling nails

0:43

from the crate. And that's when Rianne's

0:46

friend smashed her right in the

0:48

face with a hammer. I tried

0:50

to pull my face out of the way and the

0:52

hammer came up and the claw of

0:54

the hammer took me up under my front teeth

0:57

and then caught my lip and nose. And

0:59

it hurt so

1:01

bad. Her friend

1:04

broke one of her front teeth in half and

1:06

chipped the other. They laid down

1:08

and my mouth was just like watering so

1:10

bad. And I'm trying to scream, I'm trying

1:13

to cry, but I can't make any sound come out. As

1:15

a kid, Ryan was all about adventure, even

1:17

if it meant getting a few bruises. Like when

1:19

she was three, she jumped out of a tree house

1:22

just to see if she could fly. And

1:24

instead of dolls, she preferred skateboards

1:26

and skinned

1:26

knees. But this, this

1:28

was a different kind of hurt. I

1:31

couldn't even breathe with my mouth because it hurt.

1:33

Like every little bit of air on

1:36

it hurt. Oh my gosh.

1:38

I remember this kid running across the lawn,

1:41

and he pounds on the door, and he's yelling,

1:43

Mrs. Foltz, Mrs. Foltz, I killed

1:45

Ryan.

1:46

Ryan's mom, Mrs. Foltz, runs

1:49

out and rushes Ryan to the dentist.

1:51

He puts on something called a composite tooth

1:54

and he told my mom that it was temporary. Okay.

1:58

But

1:58

I never went back. Oh, you didn't. No.

2:02

She was supposed to go back for a more permanent solution, but

2:05

anything Ryan needed for her teeth never

2:07

seemed to actually happen. She grew up in

2:09

a mining town. There was a lot of poverty,

2:12

and she says tooth decay was pretty common.

2:14

Filling cavities, getting

2:16

braces, it always costs too much.

2:19

When your parents told you that they couldn't

2:21

afford braces, and after

2:23

you didn't really get that composite tooth

2:25

fixed, did you start to

2:27

piece together? your

2:30

family's economic

2:31

status? I

2:33

already knew. We lost our

2:35

house, so I knew that the bank had repossessed

2:38

it. My grandparents had to buy me school

2:40

clothes. I had a concept that...

2:42

Mm. ...races

2:44

must cost a lot more than school clothes then. But

2:47

what Ryan didn't know was just how

2:49

much that one accident would follow her.

2:51

For other kids, it may have just been another summer story.

2:54

For Ryan, though, it had lifelong

2:57

consequences. Hello,

2:59

and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Rima

3:02

Reis. And I'm Sarah Gonzalez. Rima

3:04

is joining us from a Marketplace

3:06

podcast called This Is Uncomfortable.

3:08

It is a show about all of the ways that money

3:11

can mess with our lives. And today, we

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are passing the mic over to her to

3:15

share a story about what our physical

3:17

appearances can say about

3:20

our class status. Yeah,

3:22

there are some things about the way we look that

3:24

we have some control over, you know, our clothes,

3:27

our style. But then

3:28

there are things that are just too expensive

3:31

to change. Today on the show, the

3:33

financial consequences of one

3:35

woman's smile.

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This message comes

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4:10

I'm Andrew Beck Grace, co-host of the NPR

4:12

podcast, White Lies. They're not being

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held because they're charged with a crime. These people

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4:24

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4:24

and the search for a secret list.

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to the White Lives podcast from NPR.

4:30

Growing up, Ryan moved around a

4:32

lot, and money was always tight. Her

4:35

dad worked in maintenance, and her mom was a health

4:37

aide. They fought a lot. Back

4:39

then, it seemed like the more poor we

4:41

got, the worse they... Like, they

4:44

didn't fight in front of us, but

4:46

we knew they fought. Ryan decided her

4:48

life would be different. She was going to get

4:50

a good job and leave all the fights and money troubles

4:53

behind. I wanted somewhere that would

4:55

give me a place to live that I would know would

4:57

always be there. Clothing

4:59

to wear, food to eat, and

5:01

money on top of that sounded awesome. So

5:04

for Ryanne, the Navy made a lot

5:06

of sense. When she was 18, she

5:08

enlisted in a program to become an officer.

5:11

When she got to boot camp, right off the bat, she

5:14

knew appearances were super important. Her

5:16

uniform had to be crisp, her bed always

5:18

tightly made, and like the other cadets,

5:20

her hair cut short. I

5:23

just asked the woman that was doing

5:25

it, what's the shortest you can cut it? And she said

5:27

an inch. And I said an inch, please. If

5:29

Fran's short brown hair was the first

5:31

thing you noticed, her teeth were

5:34

probably second. The composite

5:36

tooth from the accident had pretty much worn

5:38

away. Her other teeth were crooked with

5:40

gaps and chips.

5:41

But the Navy had

5:44

a solution. They take everybody in

5:46

for, like, a full dental exam. The

5:48

people who had problems all

5:51

get sent back to the clinic to start the

5:53

work. Hmm. And did you have

5:55

problems? Oh, definitely.

5:58

Yeah, her result were not pretty.

6:02

On top of broken teeth, others were rotting

6:04

and full of cavities. But they

6:06

told her, do not worry, we're gonna replace

6:09

all of them. And for Ryan, this

6:11

was huge, finally an opportunity

6:13

to fix her teeth.

6:15

They took off her composite tooth, leaving

6:17

it a stump to the operation. Then,

6:20

right before the operation, during training, Ryan

6:23

dislocated her shoulder. And then they sent

6:26

me home, as medically unfit for service.

6:28

Oh, wow. And they never fixed the tooth. And they never

6:31

did it. She was devastated. And it

6:33

wasn't just because of her teeth. The Navy

6:35

had felt like this big solution away

6:37

out of poverty. And now I wasn't going to have that

6:40

anymore, and I blamed it on me. I felt like I

6:42

personally had

6:43

failed. And in a way, the Navy

6:45

had screwed up her teeth even more. They

6:47

never replaced the composite tooth, so all

6:49

she had was that stump. Now I've

6:52

got like two-thirds of a front

6:54

tooth. If I smiled, you saw

6:56

it. Ryan was 18 when she got discharged,

6:59

and she felt lost. Her dreams

7:01

of becoming this proud, regimented officer

7:04

were replaced with hourly shifts in warehouses,

7:06

fast food joints, and call centers. At

7:09

that age, people would have seen me

7:11

as maybe a scruffy punk

7:13

kid. A lot of torn-up

7:15

jeans and Doc Martin boots

7:18

and a Metallica t-shirt. Rand

7:21

was still set on getting a better job, so

7:23

she applied to any position she could find, even

7:25

if it just paid a dollar more. Eventually,

7:28

she landed a job in tech support, but

7:30

it still barely paid the bills. I

7:33

did have one lady ask me once at some

7:35

bus stop, why don't you get the money to fix your teeth

7:37

and I just looked at her and said, from where?

7:40

I was like, that's so rude. By

7:42

the time Rand was 21, something

7:44

in her shifted. She was scared

7:46

to smile when she met new people. When she

7:48

laughed, she covered her teeth. In

7:50

pictures, always a tight grin, never

7:53

an open smile. Her mouth felt like

7:55

a billboard that screamed, hey,

7:57

I am too poor to fix my

7:59

teeth.

8:01

Fixing them would cost as much as $3,000, money she

8:03

just didn't have. And

8:06

asking her family for help felt out of the question.

8:10

And soon, Ryan had new responsibilities. She

8:12

had a son. She

8:14

was a single mom making $9 an

8:16

hour in desperate need of a higher paying

8:18

job.

8:19

And then I started going to interviews for better jobs,

8:21

more professional jobs, tech support type

8:24

things, and IT industry things.

8:27

Ryan kept her perfectly iron slacks and

8:29

her tailored blouse in the closet till interview

8:31

day, you know, just to avoid wrinkles. She'd

8:33

practice answering interview questions in her

8:36

head. Keep your head up, look like you're confident,

8:39

but

8:39

keep your chin down a little so you don't look like

8:41

you're arrogant. She

8:43

looked good, felt good, and she

8:46

was really good in the interview room. She'd

8:48

vibe with the interviewer, feel like they were really

8:50

getting along. And then suddenly they

8:52

would get awkward again. There would be that stiff we're

8:55

not clicking. And I didn't understand why.

8:57

And then were you getting any of these jobs?

9:00

Um, no. The year my

9:02

son was born, I went to

9:04

over 30 interviews. Interview

9:07

after interview, things would start off really

9:09

well.

9:10

Then out of nowhere, she could just feel

9:12

the air get sucked out of the room. But

9:15

she had no idea why. I

9:17

asked some of my friends, some of my friends that got jobs

9:19

in those places. What would they tell

9:21

you? Some of my friends that got the job instead of me. And

9:25

they're like, I don't know. You've

9:27

got all the skills. You have more skills than I do.

9:29

Hmm. You're friendlier than I

9:31

am. Mm-hmm. Okay, maybe that's it. Maybe

9:33

I'm too friendly. But then it

9:36

finally hit Ryan, the exact

9:38

moment when things would shift. And

9:41

I realized it's when we start joking. That's

9:43

when I smiled. That's when I relaxed and

9:45

really smiled. Huh.

9:49

Crap, it's my teeth. Yeah, she

9:51

wasn't positive, but it seemed when the

9:53

interviewer saw her brown rotting

9:56

teeth, everything went south.

9:58

At that point, her two front... teeth had gotten

10:01

really bad. You could see

10:03

the brown stump of what the tooth had been

10:06

and then the other one was probably

10:08

almost half gone. So would

10:11

you consciously tell yourself to not smile? So

10:13

I tried that and then I wouldn't smile the whole

10:15

interview and it didn't, they just were awkward

10:17

like the whole time. So

10:20

then what happens? Well

10:23

then was the motor oil interview. This interview

10:25

is hard to forget.

10:27

Ann felt like she was a shoo-in for this job.

10:30

She was overqualified. A friend had even

10:32

recommended her to the boss. But

10:34

like always, she didn't get it. So

10:38

she got her friend to ask, what happened?

10:41

And the response to him was, she's

10:43

really thin. And

10:45

have you seen her teeth? You

10:47

know, they thought that I was a meth

10:50

addict. They weren't

10:52

going to hire a meth addict. He said that.

10:55

He did. He said that to my friend. those

10:57

words, it stung.

10:59

I remember my face felt like really warm.

11:02

It was definitely a shame. And then I was

11:04

like really angry at this guy that I'd interviewed

11:06

with.

11:07

Here was cold, hard evidence

11:10

that just glancing at her teeth led

11:13

this guy to make all these other stereotypes associated

11:15

with being poor, like that Ryan

11:18

was dirty or on drugs. When

11:20

my friend told me that I was mad for a moment and then realized

11:22

I would have assumed the same thing. Oh, really?

11:26

Yeah.

11:27

And that's when I decided I absolutely

11:29

have to figure out how to get these teeth fixed.

11:32

That's after the break.

11:42

Hey, Jeff Guo here. Maybe you heard

11:44

our recent story, Meow Money Meow

11:47

Problems. It's about a small town where stray

11:49

cats were bequeathed hundreds of thousands of dollars

11:52

in a charitable trust.

11:53

Who's this? That's Bandit! Now,

11:57

you can go behind the scenes of our reporting

11:59

and... production process

12:02

in our recent bonus episode. There

12:04

is this deep mystery embedded what

12:06

happened to all this money. Yeah. It doesn't just vanish.

12:09

That episode is available now for Planet Money

12:11

Plus supporters. If that's not you, it

12:13

could be. Check out the link in our episode notes.

12:17

Support for NPR and the following message

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a recent HelloFresh survey, 43% of

12:25

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12:48

of the NPR podcast White Lies. In

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podcast from NPR.

13:04

Ryan finally had a concrete answer for

13:07

why she couldn't land a job. And she

13:09

felt like the only solution was to fix

13:11

her teeth.

13:12

So she slowly started saving up for that, putting

13:15

away $30, $40 here and there. But

13:17

whenever she had any amount saved, all of a

13:19

sudden she'd need money for something else, like

13:22

daycare, groceries, or a visit

13:24

to her son's dentist.

13:26

She was pretty determined to do what her parents

13:28

hadn't done for her. If it meant

13:31

that I barely ate for a week, that kid went

13:33

to his yearly checkup. Oh, wow. I'm his

13:35

parent. It's my job to

13:37

make sure he's an adult on the best footing

13:40

he can start it on. I mean, it sounds like you

13:42

realize at that point just how much

13:45

it can impact your well-being,

13:48

essentially. Right. Like, how much it

13:50

can keep you poor.

13:52

I don't want my kid

13:54

to be poor. Nobody poor wants their kid to

13:56

be poor. Nobody rich wants their kid to be poor.

13:59

Right?

14:00

And there are actually studies about

14:02

this. Like one study from

14:04

the American Dental Association found that

14:06

nearly one in three low-income adults

14:09

say their teeth make it hard to interview

14:11

for jobs.

14:12

And then there's this other study I found pretty interesting.

14:16

Out of a thousand people, more than half

14:18

said they think people with straight teeth are more

14:21

successful or wealthy, and that

14:23

they're more likely than people with crooked teeth to

14:25

land the same job.

14:27

So basically for a lot of people, Straight

14:29

teeth equals success. Growing

14:32

up, everybody I've ever known with bad teeth was poor.

14:34

Everybody that had money had good teeth. Like,

14:37

it was a reality. By the time Ryan

14:39

was in her mid-20s, she'd been laid

14:41

off from her job and was living on public assistance.

14:45

In an Arizona where she lived at the time, Medicaid

14:48

didn't cover everyday adult dental

14:50

work, which, by the way, is still the case

14:52

in most states.

14:54

Then, one day, Ryan learned something

14:56

surprising.

14:57

It was about her dad.

14:59

He also had bad teeth, but he was finally

15:01

getting them pulled and replaced with a denture.

15:04

Even though they didn't talk much, she called him

15:07

up. I was kind of jealous. Yeah? He

15:09

was very happy for my dad, but also why can't

15:12

I have that? And part of me, why couldn't

15:14

you help me have better teeth when I was a kid?

15:16

You feel resentful.

15:18

Yeah, yeah, a bit. But Ryan

15:20

didn't say that to her dad.

15:22

She told him she was happy for him and that

15:24

she was actually putting away money to fix her teeth,

15:26

too. And even though she thought

15:29

she was playing it cool, hiding how she really felt,

15:31

her

15:31

dad must have picked up on something. Because

15:34

a few months later, he called her back with news that

15:37

would change everything. He calls me

15:39

one day and like just tells me this whole thing.

15:42

You

15:42

know, you need to get your teeth fixed. And at first I'm gonna

15:44

flare up, right? Yeah, how am I supposed

15:46

to do that? Yeah. But before I can,

15:49

he finishes with, so I talked to your grandma. Hmm.

15:53

And I have a $2,500 check here. I

15:55

already talked to the entry place. They said $2,500

15:57

will cover all of it. Let's

16:00

get this done. Ryan could

16:02

hardly believe it.

16:03

Her grandmother was going to foot the $2,500 bill and

16:07

she had to pay back $100 at a time.

16:10

Ryan just had one question. How soon

16:12

can we do it? Aw. And

16:15

then thank you, dad, right? Right,

16:17

right. The first thought was let's get this done and

16:20

then thank you so much, dad. And

16:22

of course, she immediately called her grandma to

16:24

thank her. I was definitely crying. Like

16:27

I can feel myself tearing up right now a little bit over

16:29

it actually. Why is that?

16:33

This is my chance up. So

16:36

like look in a mirror

16:38

and smile and not

16:42

feel bad about how I look. Yeah.

16:46

This is my chance to maybe get this better

16:49

job. Right. And this is a chance

16:51

for me to provide a decent life for

16:53

my kid. It was a hot sunny

16:55

day when Ryan went in for the operation. She

16:58

listened to the Dave Matthews band as they replaced

17:01

her broken teeth with a gleaming acrylic

17:03

denture. It took a little over

17:05

an hour.

17:06

Ryan could not wait to get home. The

17:09

first thing I did was just like walk in my bathroom

17:11

and look in the mirror and smile. And

17:15

like cry. You cried. And

17:17

smile while I was crying. And

17:20

then I went and my friend was babysitting

17:22

my son. So I go bug him in his bedroom.

17:25

Hey, Joram, look, can I smile? and he's

17:27

like,

17:28

you're like a shark, you got new teeth.

17:31

Aw. She smiled so

17:33

much that day that her cheeks actually hurt.

17:36

I smiled so much that my front teeth

17:38

would get dry and my lip would drag closing

17:40

my mouth. I like distinctly

17:43

remember that. Wow.

17:46

Did you almost like not recognize yourself? No,

17:51

it was more like this was me. Hmm.

17:54

Like, I'd been leaking for years in a mirror

17:56

at somebody that wasn't quite me, and this was

17:58

me. now. Like

18:00

I was finally recognizing myself again.

18:03

Her teeth felt like a fresh start. So

18:05

when the tech industry crashed in Phoenix, Ryan

18:08

decided to move back to North Idaho where she

18:10

was born.

18:11

In this time, when she went in for a job interview,

18:14

it felt different.

18:15

I went in for the interview. I had the skills they

18:18

needed. They mentioned

18:20

I was overqualified. My response was that

18:22

means I absolutely know what I'm doing then. But

18:26

there's that little bit of cockiness. that

18:28

flashing the smile at them. There's that being

18:31

more charming than I had

18:33

been in previous interviews. Ryan

18:35

got a call the next day. She got

18:37

the job. With her new denture, people

18:40

seemed warmer, more accepting. And

18:42

I could smile whenever I wanted. And in

18:46

a lot of ways, it changed how people reacted to

18:48

me, which changed how I saw myself.

18:51

It's been 19 years since the operation. In

18:54

that time, she worked her way up the corporate

18:56

ladder and became an IT engineer. finally

18:58

getting that good job she dreamed of as a kid. And

19:01

maybe she would have gotten there if she didn't fix

19:04

her teeth, but in her mind, she

19:06

owes it to the operation and to her newfound

19:08

confidence.

19:10

That said, it hasn't all been

19:12

perfect.

19:13

Sometimes her denture can feel like this dirty

19:16

secret.

19:16

My husband, we have known

19:18

each other 10 years. You know how many

19:20

times he's seen me with my denture out? How many?

19:24

Once, and I had that thing back in my mouth within

19:26

a moment. Like, I have to brush

19:29

them thoroughly, like take them out and brush them. I don't

19:31

do that when he's around. I'll make him leave the bathroom. Hmm.

19:34

I feel awkward and embarrassed. I was pretty

19:36

surprised that she still felt embarrassed by

19:38

her teeth decades later in

19:40

her most intimate relationship. But

19:43

then she told me how she makes sense of

19:45

it. Honestly, I think maybe good teeth is the

19:47

standard and not having that signifies

19:49

the opposite things. It's not that having

19:52

good teeth signifies you're a good person, But

19:55

having bad teeth says bad things

19:57

about you. Even Ryan has found herself

20:00

classifying people the same way. Like

20:02

with this old coworker. So I meet him my

20:04

first day as a coworker of his. And

20:07

I know that this shop doesn't pay massively,

20:09

but it pays okay and we have dental insurance

20:12

and his front teeth are really dark. And

20:14

I remember meeting him, liking

20:16

him, but also thinking, dude,

20:18

why have you not fixed your teeth? But

20:21

you didn't find yourself having

20:22

those thoughts before your teeth were fixed. I

20:25

think I did. Like I feel like I did

20:27

judge other people and that meant I also

20:29

was judging myself. Society

20:32

tells us being poor is bad or

20:34

that you're to blame. And even though

20:36

Ryan had lived through these circumstances herself,

20:39

those messages are so strong that

20:42

she'd internalize them. How do you think you

20:44

would feel if your husband or your closest

20:46

friends

20:47

saw you for, like, a day without your dentures?

20:52

I'd get over it, but at first it would

20:54

be hard. Like, I would not smile for sure,

20:57

and I would not be talking to them. Hmm.

21:00

So I'm gonna do a thing here. This

21:03

is like the max amount of

21:05

adrenaline.

21:12

Oh, you're taking them off. This is what

21:14

I sound like with them out. You

21:18

are not likely to hear me speak to people

21:20

with them out unless I absolutely have to

21:22

in emergency. And that's

21:25

the longest I've had those out since I was 25. Decades

21:29

later, Ryan still has stress

21:31

dreams about having bad teeth.

21:33

I have this emotional attachment to good

21:35

teeth.

21:38

And the thought of not having them again kind

21:40

of, it scares me, actually. Because

21:44

it would be reverting to that past

21:46

Ryan, who was young

21:48

and not doing really well in life. Hmm.

21:54

I don't want to be her again. I appreciate her. She

21:56

worked hard. She was a good person,

21:59

but I don't want to be her. She tells me about the

22:01

first job interview she had after getting

22:03

new teeth. She fondly thinks back

22:05

on it and how the interviewer stopped

22:08

her on the way out. She actually says,

22:11

with no hesitation, you have

22:13

wonderful teeth. You have a great smile.

22:16

Well, I walked out of there. I floated out

22:18

of there. I did not walk. I

22:21

just told her, thank you. There was a lot of work

22:23

involved. I

22:25

keep thinking about what Ryan said

22:28

about how society sees good teeth as

22:30

the norm. It's what's expected. I

22:33

think she's right, but that's also deeply

22:35

frustrating that she felt like the only

22:37

way she can move up and be accepted was

22:39

by quote-unquote fixing herself. That's

22:42

because bad teeth aren't usually seen

22:44

as a reflection of larger issues like

22:47

poverty or inequalities in dental access.

22:49

It's often very personal, like it's

22:52

your fault. And the result

22:54

is that every day we make snap judgments of

22:56

people based on these ideas. Ideas

22:58

that are incredibly flawed and full of biases.

23:02

Like what someone's smile says

23:04

about their worth.

23:09

That was Rima Kreis from the

23:11

Marketplace podcast. This is uncomfortable.

23:13

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out their

23:16

feed for more stories about life

23:18

and how money messes with it. This episode

23:20

of This is Uncomfortable was produced by Peter Balanan-Rosen

23:23

and hosted by Frima Klais. Peter

23:25

and Rima wrote the episode together. It was edited

23:27

by Michaela Bly with additional production

23:30

support from Megan Deitre, Hailey

23:32

Hirschman, and Daniel Martinez. The

23:34

episode was mixed by Charlton Thorpe.

23:37

This is Uncomfortable's senior producer is Zoe Sanders

23:39

and Bridget Bodner is Marketplace's director

23:42

of podcasts. And their theme music is

23:44

by Wonderly. The Planet Money version

23:46

was produced by Alyssa John Perry and engineered

23:48

by Robert Rodriguez. I'm Sarah Gonzalez.

23:51

This is NPR. Thanks for listening.

23:54

But it's weird, because occasionally when I listen

23:56

to Dave Matthews, I do think of dental

23:58

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