In today's article, we start with the modernity of oral hygiene, talk about dental hygiene and aesthetics, and the cultural concepts behind it.

These days, white, straight teeth have become an essential part of a "perfect smile." Teeth have unconsciously become the image of people and even the front of the class. How did teeth gain their importance today? This has to do with the whole modern discourse surrounding hygiene and oral health.

In the modern tedious list of personal hygiene, dental cleaning has gradually evolved from a daily routine of twice in the morning and night to a kind of image work that requires constant attention, so we often see people flossing or toothbrushing after eating and checking whether the teeth are clean.

In addition, the color of teeth has gradually become the focus of attention, a white tooth, no longer just a variety of whitening toothpaste fancy propaganda, but also began to become the pursuit of aesthetic goals.

I do not know when to start, the board is neat tooth shape has become the main driving force for people to enter the dental institution, so popular that we are almost difficult to see all kinds of teeth that were once accustomed to in the current public film and television works. Instead, always a white and neat teeth, although sometimes revealed a strong artificial sense, but it has gradually become an important facade of personal hygiene, image and even social class.

The various health checks, commercial publicity and social image shaping around this small tooth seem to reflect not only the diversified changes in people's aesthetic tendencies, because behind it are actually involved in many important issues in the shape of modern countries.

In her monograph "The Modernity of Health", which studies health and disease in modern China, she positioned the core of the discussion on the discourse shaping of "health" in modern China.

The concept of "hygiene" gradually spread with the establishment of colonies in China by Western powers in the late 19th century, so the main cities that Lovyun focused on were the treaty ports of the time, such as Tianjin and Shanghai. In the view of Western colonists, traditional Chinese people lacked the concept of hygiene, which enabled them to construct a set of civilized discourse against China.

Because the concept of "health" born in the West a century ago involves not only the new bacteriology and medicine, but also a series of complex factors such as modern national governance, science and ethnic attributes, which makes "health" small but significant, especially when it includes both individual health and national health. In fact, it is closely related to modernity and the evolutionary understanding of civilization and race at the time.

From this perspective, we can understand why modern Chinese intellectuals not only agree with the Western criticism that traditional China has no "health", but also hope that a complete modern (Western) health system can be established thereby to completely transform the traditional Chinese (human) cosmology.

It is also in this context that the importance of individual health emerges along with national (ethnic) health, and plays a fundamental role to a large extent, because the foundation element of modern nation-state construction is precisely the individual who has been separated from the traditional family system (Novel and Individual in Hong Tao's Three Literary Pieces).

As the core component of the modern nation-state, the first thing to protect them is their individual health and hygiene, and this "health" also includes two aspects:

The first is physical hygiene, which has resulted in a new set of scientific methods for cleaning and maintaining good health, and has permeated the daily life of the people through various health manuals, newspapers and lectures

; The second is mental health, that is, to clear away traditional backward concepts and accept the baptism of modern new ideas, so as to be transformed to meet the needs of the new world. It is precisely the cleaning and shaping of physical and mental health around "hygiene" that individuals can finally get rid of the stigma and fate of "sick man of East Asia" and become "new/people", thus contributing to the construction of a healthy and strong modern nation-state.

In modern China's "health" discourse, the shaping and construction of "body-state" is often isomorphic, so we often find that the state is personified, so that the health discourse about individuals can also act on the modern nation state, so that individuals have an intimate and self-related feeling about it. It is also in this "health" discourse that the oral health of modern individuals began to be paid attention to, and the cleaning of teeth has become an important content in various health guidelines.

In 1922, the article "Ministry of Health: Dental Hygiene" published by the Chinese Education and Health Association in the "Voice of the Last Days" pointed out that "poison in the mouth can spread throughout the whole body", so maintaining oral health has become the primary importance of protecting physical health; This article not only lists several possible oral diseases, but also explains in detail how to choose a toothbrush (bristle hardness) and the right way to brush your teeth...

Such articles dealing with oral hygiene and how to clean have gradually increased since the 1920s, and although they mainly revolve around individual hygiene (often modern antibacterial discourse), they also occasionally reveal that they are related to the construction of the modern state, especially its powerful imagination, such as "Student Health Talk: The article "Dental Hygiene" emphasizes the importance of protecting teeth,

Of particular note are the author's last two examples, one of German soldiers valuing their toothbrushes as much as their guns, and the other of American conscripts checking for dental health. "Armed to the teeth" has always occupied a central position in modern "hygiene" discourse.

In his monograph "Cleanliness" の Modern Times, which studies the discourse of "hygiene" in Japan during the Ming Dynasty, Yoshihiro Ono also found the close connection between individual hygiene, national hygiene and civilization.

In particular, through a series of "antibacterial" discourse, healthy and clean individuals, national institutions and social Spaces were built, so as to not only show their own civilization level and image (civilization hierarchy theory). It can also rely on the demarcation of "pollution and cleanliness" to distinguish between people and classes.

The Japanese, for example, are increasingly portraying themselves as a race that values personal hygiene and urban cleanliness as much as Westerners do. The modern "health" is not so much a series of modern antibacterial and scientific engineering, but rather an important tool and means to shape the modern state. It is precisely through the "health" discourse that the modern state power can operate;

At the same time, it is precisely through various detailed scientific cleaning guidelines that it can successfully cross various obstacles into the body and soul of modern individuals, urban Spaces and national organizations, so that these seemingly scattered parts can be assembled into a whole, that is, the modern "nation state" this whole machine.

In this way, our teeth are both a matter of our own health and a proof that we are part of a proper modern nation-state. The purpose of the "hygiene" discourse is to transform people from sick people to new people, from people who were once confused by opium or lack of hygiene to modern healthy people who clean their teeth every day.