If you’re just now getting to this party, here’s the underlying logic: In Thailand, Indonesia and China, braces are still expensive enough to be placed outside the budgets of most families.
Therefore, if you have braces, you must be rich, and since being rich is totally cool, Thai teens have taken to donning fake braces as a fashion statement. Sure, those braces might be killing them, but that’s the price you pay for beauty.
As reported by Business Insider, and the ever-reliable Vice, fake braces have been linked to the deaths of two Thai teens, both of who died from lead poisoning from their faux-orthodontia.
Some teens pay more than B3,000 for false braces and, as the YouTube clip here illustrates, some go so far as to install their own headgear.
Last year, the Thai government banned the importation and sale of fashion braces, but the practice has since gone underground, which we’re sure has done nothing but make it safer and more legit.
View the original story on Coconuts Bangkok here.