Professor Maxine Craig's article "Perfect smiles, aesthetic citizenship, and the U.S. State" traces the development of the social expectation in the United States for perfected smiles, produced through orthodontic treatment, and discusses its implication for two dimensions of citizenship: rights and sense of belonging. Belonging is facilitated by normative embodiment. In the contemporary United States, an irregular smile is a mark of alterity, indicating poverty, parental neglect, or foreign birth.