Where did the sterotype of british having dirty teeth come from?

The British having "bad teeth" doesn't mean "dirty teeth" but badly shapened teeth.

The Americans and Canadians have always been a bit spastic about having straight teeth.

There are now decades of people who have never actually seen people with these misshapened teeth all sticking out in strange places.

It's quite shocking to see for many people.

Your teeth could be a white as virgin snow but that one little tooth sticking out at that weird angle ---- People are still like "Damn, what's up with their bad teeth!".

Don't take it personal.

Britain was behind much of the rest of the 1st world in putting fluoride in it's drinking water, places like the US started putting it in back in the 1930's (though I believe fluoride is no longer put in water)

fluoride is one of the ingredients of toothpaste, so in WW2 lots of Americans arrived in the UK with whiter teeth than the British had.

Later on in the 1960's and 1970's when british rock bands ruled the world and had massive numbers of fans across the world, it was noticed that many of these British rockers had really poor teeth, (crooked etc) David Bowie for example (he has fixed his teeth up now) as these guys were often the only British people most of the world ever got to see and since so many of them had pretty poor teeth, the stereotype that Brits have bad teeth was born

The notion that British have dirty teeth came from "Austin Powers" and the actor Hugh Grant.

Not sure, im British, i personally have straight white teeth.. but a lot of people at my school have braces and "wonky" teeth.. They're just stereotypes

it's not that they have dirty teeth. it's that they don't use braces on their teeth as much as some other places so they are not as straight