Why not let today be the day you finally get it all together?
BuzzFeedVideo / Via youtube.com
Why not let today be the day you finally get it all together?
BuzzFeedVideo / Via youtube.com
Because nothing says “Thanksgiving” like being too grossed-out to eat. WARNING: Major gore ahead. Also, spoilers! Proceed at your own risk.
Body horror is defined as "a horror film genre in which the main feature is the graphically depicted destruction or degeneration of a human body or bodies." It is best enjoyed on an empty stomach. With that in mind, here are some of the finest, most cringe-inducing body horror films of all time — definitely not for the faint of heart.
Directed by: David Lynch
Written by: David Lynch
What it's about: Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) is abandoned by his girlfriend Mary X (Charlotte Stewart) and left to care for their child, an incessantly crying infant that may not be human.
Key body horror moment: Spencer removes his child's swaddling and realizes it has no skin. Without anything to hold them in, the child's organs spill out, and Spencer cuts them apart with scissors.
Criterion
Directed by: David Cronenberg
Written by: David Cronenberg
What it's about: After a motorcycle accident, Rose (Marilyn Chambers) gets experimental skin grafting surgery. Soon she's hungering for human blood and turning all her victims into equally rabid zombies.
Key body horror moment: From the new orifice in Rose's armpit — which, it's worth noting, looks very much like a vagina — a phallic stinger emerges to drain blood from her victims.
Somerville House
Directed by: William Sachs
Written by: William Sachs
What it's about: Doesn't the title say it all? Astronaut Steve West (Alex Rebar) returns from a trip to Saturn where his fellow astronauts were killed by a radiation blast. As Alex's skin begins melting away, he is forced to eat human flesh to survive.
Key body horror moment: Unable to go on any longer, West collapses and ultimately melts into a pile of goo, which a janitor mops up with little fanfare the next morning.
Shout! Factory
Is it worth the money? What do you think?
BuzzFeedBlue / Via youtube.com
No dogs were harmed in the making of this video.
BuzzFeedBlue / Via youtube.com
“I’m gonna lose 10 pounds…then gain 20…”
BuzzFeedYellow / Via youtube.com
“I can’t help everyone in the world, but I can help you.”
[Remorse]: Not all days, but most my teeth hurt and I have no way to stop the pain. I live in the USA and cannot afford insurance to get it fixed. If I had the money to get them all pulled and replaced I would, but the dental place told me it would cost over $7,000.
My life has been going well for the most part lately and I feel horrible for even thinking of wanting to die to escape the pain. I have 2 kids that need me and a family that loves me, but love doesn't buy new teeth.
If this is true, I will pay for your treatment. Either at a place near you, or if it's more cost-effective, I will buy you a ticket to Costa Rica, and for you to get treatment at a reputable clinic here.
You can check my history to see that this is a legitimate account that's not into trolling. I can't help everyone in the world, but I can help you. Your situation hits a nerve with me.
Maybe you can make it up to me by posting before and after pictures, or something. That would be nice to see.
Can you watch this without feeling really weird?
BuzzFeed Video / Via youtube.com
LINK: Based on 31 Photos That Will Make You More Uncomfortable Than They Should
If you’re not afraid of getting down and dirty, you’re not paying attention. Warning: SPOILERS for many movies ahead!
Directed by: Roman Polanski
Written by: Roman Polanski
What it's about: Pregnant Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) becomes convinced that there's something wrong with whatever's growing inside her, and it's all part of a conspiracy that includes her husband Guy (John Cassavetes).
What it'll make you afraid of: Being betrayed by your partner into carrying the demonic spawn of Satan. Also, post-sex scratch marks will now have you questioning whether you actually did the deed with the devil.
Paramount Pictures
Directed by: Wes Craven
Written by: Wes Craven
What it's about: Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassel) is raped and murdered by escaped convicts. When the perpetrators show up at the door of Mari's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Collingwood (Gaylord St. James and Cynthia Carr), seek revenge.
What it'll make you afraid of: A blow job with teeth. To be fair, Weasel (Fred Lincoln) totally deserved it, but you'll definitely think twice about where you put your penis — not that you shouldn't already!
MGM
Directed by: Nicolas Roeg
Written by: Allan Scott and Chris Bryant
What it's about: After the drowning death of their daughter Christine, John (Donald Sutherland) and Laura Baxter (Julie Christie) take a trip to Venice, where they meet a blind psychic (Hilary Mason) who claims she can see Christine.
What it'll make you afraid of: The inextricable link between sex and death. You might think you and your wife are finally moving past the death of your daughter, but you'll later flash back to that passionate fuck-fest when you're bleeding out.
Paramount Pictures
Directed by: Paul Morrissey
Written by: Paul Morrissey
What it's about: Baron von Frankenstein (Udo Kier) is obsessed with creating a master race to serve him, and he hopes the head of a lustful stableboy (Joe Dallesandro) will speed up the breeding process.
What it'll make you afraid of: Being used — do you genuinely want to get down with that person, or are you being manipulated by a mad scientist? Also, rough sex can result in disembowelment, apparently.
Image Entertainment
There’s being nice to your waiter and then there’s THIS!
Smile! If you can.
MGM / Via televandalist.com
Yeah, I know, should've worn my retainer more.
Capitol / Via buzzworthy.mtv.com
Universal / Via maudit.tumblr.com
Don’t be that person.
BuzzFeedVideo / Via youtube.com
Someone save her!
BuzzFeedVideo
Why is he just smiling like everything is normal?! Everything is not normal!
BuzzFeedVideo
USE YOUR WORDS. And do some good for humanity.
BuzzFeedVideo
Mind the gap.
Yamini Karanam jokingly claimed that her “evil twin” had been torturing her for years.
Karanam told NBC4 News that she could not understand what was going on when two or more people were talking at the same time.
Writing on her blog in March, Karanam said she began experiencing headaches, then started making "slips and misses" at work and found herself struggling to read.
Doctors investigated and thought they discovered a tumour, although different experts could not agree on what action to take.
NBC4 News
It was there that her surgeon, Dr Hrayr Shahinian, made a remarkable discovery.
NBC4 News
The teratoma was reportedly found with bone, hair, and teeth.
Karanam jokingly referred to it as her "evil twin" during an interview with NBC4 News.
“[It’s] has been torturing me for the last 26 years, can you believe it?” she said.
Doctors have now removed the teratoma, and Karanam is expected to make a full recovery.
NBC4 News
"I was stuck with it much longer than I thought," she said.
"It doesn't leave you much choice other than to deal with it the best you can."
“Let’s give myself a Disney princess waistline!”
youtube.com / Via youtube.com
BuzzFeed Yellow / Via youtube.com
BuzzFeed Yellow / Via youtube.com
BuzzFeed Yellow / Via youtube.com
Illustration by Linda Yan for BuzzFeed Ideas
I have my father's smile. I wasn’t always sure that was a good thing. We both shared a feature, a separation between our two front teeth. It was slight when I was a kid, yet as the years progressed, it widened and is the dominant feature to my smile. On my mother’s side, my mother, her siblings, her mother, her nieces, my cousins (we were a family of exclusively girl children until 1986), and lo, my own sister, were all blessed with fairly straight teeth. No space between. I was aware that I was different. But for the most part, no one ever made me feel bad about it. That’s really what we look to high school for.
Freshman year of high school by design is its own kind of hazing. An upperclassman in pre-IB geometry tried to do me a solid, chronicling a set of humiliations foretold. I was a nerdy, reserved dark girl with an asymmetrical bob, as was the style in those days, and really good at proofs. One day, he offered some unsolicited advice.
Him: “Have you had British lit yet?”
Me: “No.”
Him: “Don’t smile when they get to 'The Wife of Bath.'”
Me: “Why?”
Him: “Trust me.”
I had no idea what he meant by that. But the immediate cosign from his friend, another classmate, only reinforced the warning: “Oh, yeah…Chaucer. That’s not going to be good for you.”
Months later, during my sophomore year of high school, their warnings would come into sharper focus as my British literature class zeroed in on the following passage:
“Gap-toothed was she, it is the truth I say.
Upon a pacing horse easily she sat,
Wearing a large wimple, and over all a hat
As broad as is a buckler or a targe;
An overskirt was tucked around her buttocks large”
This was also the year that Sir Mix-a-Lot’s seminal classic “Baby Got Back” ascended in hip-hop and pop charts, and blared across booming systems on ashy gray Midwest streets, the year when my male classmates perfected their marriage of dick jokes and hip-hop, and embraced their discovery of black female backsides. These were the tender years of youth and the bane of my fucking existence.
However, teenagers being teenagers, and I, the singularly gap-toothed person in class, all eyes shifted on me. As expected, a request emerged, set up for ridicule: “Hey, S — smile?”
I don’t think I smiled much in class for the rest of that unit. And if I did, I harbored great discomfort. I don’t think I stopped participating in class discussions; I was still my father’s daughter, defiant and gap-toothed, very much assertive in self-expression. I was still a nerd, but I cannot deny that I leaned on the strength of my intellect because I feared everyone had finally accepted this truth so wretchedly rendered in Chaucer’s portrait of "The Wife of Bath": to have gap teeth is to be ugly and to boot, sexually promiscuous. Even the textbook insisted that the trait was an imperfection, implying Chaucer’s portrayal as proxy for a widely accepted Westernized beauty standard.
Who the hell set things up like this?
In dentistry speak, the space between two front teeth is called a maxillary midline diastema. It is a genetic trait. It occurs across cultures and in casual observance, appears to have a higher occurrence among black communities. Some research notes black children exhibit more than twice the prevalence of gap teeth as white children. In books and articles I’ve read over the years, a worldview became visible about its value, ranging from "normal" to "appalling" to a "deviation from normal adult dentition."
There are plenty of stories I’ve been told over the years where friends and folks had a modest midline diastema, and their parents immediately ferried them to the dentist’s office as children to get braces to ensure its closure or invested in veneers. While at home, my gap teeth hadn’t been a viewed as a scourge or subject to ridicule, but at school, what was normal or incidental to me became a focus of imperfection by some of my peers.
The diastema in our particular black family bloodline is as indiscriminate as it is random. I had initially thought I inherited this distinction exclusively from my father and his line. But upon further reflection, I recognized the trait also exists in mother’s line. I’m missing some family photos, so I called my grandmother, my mother’s mother, the other day just to fact-check who else on that side may have had the midline diastema. She immediately chirped, "Oh no, you got solely from your father’s side of the family." I had to remind her that her first husband, my mother’s father, and the father of five of her children, also shared the trait. She had forgotten. The prevailing wisdom had been I had solely inherited the diastema from my father’s clan. Here, I wondered, how in world did I alone win in the diastema lottery? How did I become an outlier? Shouldn’t they have it too? I hadn’t realized before that I was never made to feel different because of it within the family, but I was the only one.
I remember in high school seeing old pictures of Malcolm X and noticing there were pictures with him, his bright smile or speaking, where a small separation between his two front teeth were visible and other pictures where it seemed phantom, disappeared. Later, I discovered that he wore caps to cover his slight diastema. Even Malcolm X got caught up in moments conforming to Westernized vanity and beauty. What hope could there be for me?
It wasn't until I moved to New York in my twenties that I adjusted my own perception and understanding of gap teeth. I kept track to see who covered them or displayed them broadly with power. New York’s immigrant community, with its multitudes of the black diaspora, was a revelation. In Wisconsin, I was simply a dark girl with imperfect teeth. In some ways, I’m still a dark girl with imperfect teeth, a wide, distant space between, just like my father, just like his sister. Yet, in New York, Ghanian and Nigerian immigrants (or first- and second-generation Americans) would stop to ask me where I was from. They bristled or looked confused when I said Wisconsin by way of Tennessee.
“You look like my aunt." "You look like my people." "You look like a Ghanian woman” were things I heard from men over the years I’ve lived in New York. I wasn’t sure if that was a come-on, or a compliment. Yet, what I do know about being seven generations American — descendent of enslaved people and slave owners — is that I have an incomplete story of my heritage.
In these encounters with West Africans, I began a quietly informal inquiry to undo my acceptance of Westernized beauty standards, of white beauty standards, and the gift in these interactions had opened me up to recognize that not only was the diastema a sign and trait of beauty in these cultures, it was a clue from whence some of us came.
I relayed my discoveries to my mother some time ago. She listened, and suddenly, it hit her like a thunderbolt, a thing that never occurred to her before, and she spoke with a kind of wispy awe: “You know, I didn’t even think of that. We don’t know what our ancestry is. We don’t know what tribe we might have come from. I didn’t know that. That’s amazing. That’s interesting.”
A Nigerian acquaintance once told me how much he loved my gap. I learned from him that my gap teeth are valued, and in some instances coveted, by some Nigerian woman. I had never considered that I would posses anyone’s ideal. I live in America, and there are many reinforcements to remind me that small gap-toothed dark girls are the least desired. My gap teeth defined as a beauty mark? That shifted my axis.
That anecdotal evidence was confirmed by a 2009 study from the University of Ilorin in Nigeria assessing hereditary incidence and cultural attitudes of diastemas among Yoruba-speaking southwestern Nigerians. The study noted a modest rate of occurrence (just under 27%) of midline diastemas. Yet, it also revealed Nigerians view diastemas overwhelmingly favorably. Those without diastemas expressed desires to artificially create one. While dentists view the practice as risky — occasionally these procedures create their own set of complications — women ignore the risks to attain a prized beauty mark that the West deems disfiguring.
I may have rolled my eyes hard when I came across an article a few years back that heralded that gap teeth were on the verge of becoming a hot fashion trend. When runway models in 2010 and 2013 were seeing a spike in calls for models who represented "quirky" features, a patter of articles surfaced claiming a culture shift in embracing what Western culture has always deemed a "mishap." Still, I didn’t see many dark-skinned women included in these sweet exhortations in what folks were branding as the beauty in imperfection. It read like backhanded compliments and erasure. It was still celebrating a white ideal, a feature prevalent in West African peoples. Why isn’t it simply beautiful? As the writer and poet Crystal Williams wrote in a 2011 essay for Tin House, “Sociocultural norms inform our standards — and definitions — sometimes so subconsciously that we act in response to what our culture thinks is beauty without understanding that beauty is at the root of our actions.”
The moment you recognize you’re conforming to someone else’s standard of beauty, when you can switch the gaze, the space between seems less like a flaw but instead a badge, a mark.
I met a woman a few weeks ago at a conference who was thrilled to see that I shared the gap. We’re both Americans, descendants of enslaved people and slave owners. She told me a bit of folklore about a woman with gap teeth as it connected with her faith and her father: “I’ll never get rid of my gap. I got it from my daddy and it is reflective of a woman in my faith. I’m proud of my gap.”
I’ve been asked and have asked myself why I never I got it closed. When I was younger, braces and dental surgery were less of a priority for my parents, who were working to make ends meet. When I was 13, the dentist explained that he’d have to break my jaw, wire it shut, and then apply braces to maybe close the gap. That seemed like a lot of pain to endure for some measure of acceptance by my less enlightened classmates. I had the luxury of developing a thick skin when people unfamiliar with a small, dark girl with gap teeth would enter their social universe. If I wasn’t beautiful, at least I was smart as hell. I learned the craft of being exceptional. And over time, I recognized that I would lose something distinctly myself, a part of my identity and personhood if I covered or closed it. I don’t think I could ever be the me I am without it.
Last week, my mother’s youngest sister informed me that her 8-year-old daughter has a diastema. Neither parent has gap teeth. My cousin still loves Barbies, plays pretend, and goes to school, no one yet marking her difference. “You thought you were alone all this time,” my aunt told me, “but who knows — she may need to come to you. She needs you to shine so she’s beautiful too.”
In hindsight, I wonder if scholars might have Chaucer’s read of "The Wife of Bath" all wrong. As I revisited her tale, this old woman, gap-toothed, full-figured, was full of rigor and humor, and kind of a sex-positive feminist for medieval Europe. She was so unapologetically herself, recounting all her loves, triumphs, and disasters, that I realized that she gave nary a fuck. And I am my father's daughter: gap teethed and easy with smiles, suffers no fools. Here, in the words of Zora Neale Hurston, I "love myself when I am laughing. . . and then again when I am looking mean and impressive."
Want to read more essays from Inheritance Week? Sarah Hagi wrote about paying remittance. David Dobbs explained the genetic research industry’s exaggerated picture of genetic power. Susie Cagle wrote about the difficulty of selling her grandmother’s clothes and the worth of vintage. Sharon H. Chang wrote about society’s fixation with mixed-race beauty. Chelsea Fagan compiled lessons on love and money from our parents. AJ Jacobs wrote about planning the world’s largest family reunion. And finally, Rosecrans Baldwin wrote about reciting poetry at public gatherings, something he inherited from his grandfather.
“This has been the most body-positive week I’ve ever had.”
BuzzFeed
It’s just a little something. Right…there.
How to avoid stank breath and stay ~flossy~.
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
"Anyone can get bad breath. I've seen it in men and women from 10 years old to 95 years old and you can develop it at any point in your life," Dr. Gary Herskovits, D.D.S., of the Fresh Breath Center and Brooklyn Smile in Brooklyn, New York, tells BuzzFeed Life.
It's pretty common, and often treatable. So you shouldn't be ashamed if you have bad breath, even though it can seem super embarrassing.
Disney / Via ifthegiffits.tumblr.com
"There's the temporary 'I just had garlic and onions on my sandwich at lunch' bad breath, where these pungent flavors linger in the mouth and lungs," Dr. Matthew Messina, D.D.S., spokesperson for the American Dental Association (ADA), tells BuzzFeed Life.
And then there's bad breath caused by bacteria in your mouth, which is halitosis. This kind can vary in severity, so it can be something you can fix on your own or something you need to see a doctor about (we'll get to all that in a bit).
CW / Via janicedickinson.tumblr.com
Bad breath which is more severe and chronic is typically due to a problem with the makeup of bacteria in your mouth. When you eat, there's bacteria in your mouth that break down food and proteins — which is a good thing. "Bad breath is caused by the presence of too much anaerobic bacteria — meaning it does not need oxygen to survive — in the mouth," Dr. Steven Fox, D.D.S, who has served as faculty at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine and practices in Manhattan, New York, tells BuzzFeed Life.
How can you tell if there's an imbalance of anaerobic bacteria in your mouth? You can't. Fox explains that only a dentist can examine the "bacterial flora" of your mouth and determine what is causing the bad breath.
It's less likely, but sometimes halitosis can be caused by gum disease, gastric reflux, sinus drainage, diabetes, tonsil stones, or other oral diseases, says Messina. If you improve your oral hygiene and and your breath doesn't get better, or the stank breath begins very suddenly, you should see a dentist who can better look into the problem and suggest a treatment.
University of California / Via ucresearch.tumblr.com
“I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony…”
Charlotte Bateman, 49, didn’t want to go out in public after an undiagnosed gum disease did this to her teeth.
PA Real Life
She told PA Real Life that she had raised concerns about the fact that her teeth were "drifting" around her mouth, but her gum disease remained undiagnosed.
"When I would visit the dentist my gums would bleed so much during the examinations that they would have to stop and get me to rinse every time an instrument was put in my mouth," she said.
"One day, when I was flossing at home, a piece of debris got pushed up and lodged in my gum – gums are not meant to be soft like that. I knew something was seriously wrong."
Eventually, she was diagnosed with severe periodonatal disease in 2011. An X-ray taken during an orthodontic consultation showed that several of her teeth were exhibiting bone loss.
Picasa / PA Real Life
However, the saga has taken its toll on her. She told PA Real Life: "My neighbour, who hadn't seen me in a while, visited shortly after that appointment and was visibly shocked at how my teeth looked.
"I was so embarrassed. I didn't want to be seen in public after that. I retreated into myself and avoided social situations."
She says that as a result of her embarrassment, her business suffered: "I work in the wedding cake industry, which is very appearance-orientated," she said.
"Looking your best is vital. I have lots of face-to-face contact with clients and struggled to project an air of confidence."