

Perhaps one of the stranger aspects of celebrity: Thousands, if not millions, of people are aware of the exact appearance of your teeth, and hold strong opinions on your decision to alter said appearance in any way. Happy no one reacted on Twitter to my bold decision to remove the piece of arugula I accidentally stored between my front teeth for six hours yesterday!
Anyway, the point is: Dakota Johnson's tooth gap has long been one of her most defining features, to the extent she made a whole Vanity Fair video about it. But at the premiere for her new movie The Peanut Butter Falcon, the gap was nowhere to be seen, as People reports—presumably the result of a little bit of dental work.
Which means that Dakota's lost her only party trick—back in 2017, she appeared in Vanity Fair's Secret Talent Theatre video series, in which celebrities showcased their hidden or unusual skills. Dakota's talent was gap-related: "Today I'm going to demonstrate how many things I can fit inside my gap tooth, cause that's my only skill," she said.
She proceeded to successfully insert a toothpick, a credit card, a coffee stirrer, a paper clip, a cherry stem ("That one fits like a glove. It's like they were made for each other"), and $1100 in cash between her two front teeth. "Hi, I'm Dakota Johnson, and I can fit a twig between my teeth," she said in the video. Not any more, Dakota! Where are you going to store all your spare twigs now?
The internet, as is the internet's wont, has strong opinions about Dakota's dental work, perhaps best summed up by the below moving video tribute from @suspjria:
rip dakota johnson’s gap tooth gone but not forgotten pic.twitter.com/MhSv2G2ZWlAugust 4, 2019
But exactly what happened to close that precious gap? Dakota set the record straight on last night's episode of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. "I had a permanent retainer since I was 13, and it was just glued to the back of my teeth," the actress explained to the late night host. "I was having a lot of neck problems recently so my orthodontist, she decided it would be a good idea to take it off and see if my jaw expanded, and it helped me. And my gap closed by itself. And I’m really sad about it too."
In conclusion: Dakota Johnson, an extremely beautiful actress, looked extremely beautiful before closing her tooth gap, and remains extremely beautiful afterwards. And braces are terrible.
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Emily Dixon is a British journalist who’s contributed to CNN, Teen Vogue, Time, Glamour, The Guardian, Wonderland, The Big Roundtable, Bust, and more, on everything from mental health to fashion to political activism to feminist zine collectives. She’s also a committed Beyoncé, Kacey Musgraves, and Tracee Ellis Ross fan, an enthusiastic but terrible ballet dancer, and a proud Geordie lass.
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