If you live in Cape Town, you’ve definitely born witness to the ‘passion gap’. The famous gap sported by many people from the coloured community in Cape Town has finally received international attention.

The Telegraph has done some research, they set out to find out why pulling out your four front teeth is such an enduring trend in the coloured community of the Cape.

Urban myth contends that the practice is a statement of fashion, or an end to improved oral sex.

Jacqui Friedling of the University of Cape Town’s human biology department studied the phenomenon in 2003 and found these were the top four reasons for removing the four front teeth: fashion, peer pressure, gangsterism and medical reasons.

“It is the ‘in’ thing to do. It went through a wave, it was fashionable in my parents’ time,” she said.

Rob Barry from the dentistry faculty at the University of the Western Cape said the practice is increasing, even though dentists are not supposed to remove healthy teeth. He says that he has made thousands – yes, thousands – of partial dentures for people who need to hide the gap in their teeth at work or formal functions.

Since mostly people from poorer communities opt for the procedure, the addition of gold, jewels and assorted bling on your dentures is regarded as a powerful status symbol.

Here, it was a case of them elevating themselves above the rest of their peers, (it was) not to do with hip hop culture. The minute they can afford different sets of dentures then (the idea is) ‘I am a bit better than you’,”

Not everyone is pleased with their decision to remove their teeth. The Telegraph interviewed 33 year old Ebrahim Jardin who said:

I should have kept my front teeth. Most of the younger people do it, but I don’t think it’s cool anymore. It is people expressing their stupidity

[Source: The Telegraph]