By Martine Duplessis

Fetishes are (almost) by definition weird, or, irrational. There is no explanation as to why some people love feet or boots or whatever, even it seems braces. Braces used to be the provenance of kids. But more and more adults are getting them, adding a certain juvenile charm to their faces. The steel bands, wires, plastic brackets and colored rubber bands have a nasty metallic and harsh look to them that some people cannot resist. This obscure fetish is nicely honored and documented on the silversmiles web site at www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Villa/2658. There is the requisite gallery of photos, featuring Amy, Jenny, and Kim. Also featured is a "Conversation with an OrthFetishist," true stories featuring braces and the braces experience, other links (of course) and most interestingly, A Do-It-Yourself Guide. Do-It-Yourself braces seem like a bad idea to me, but hey, this is fetish territory so, there you go. There are links to suppliers as well, should you decide to explore this idea.

Should you draw the line at the DIY approach, you may be intrigued by fake braces, which would seem a whole lot safer. Over on

On a more serious note, www.some.orb/braces is the location of the Mouth Jewelry home page. There's lots of braces trivia here, for example a list of braces seen in music videos (Suede "Trash" video) and movies (like "Brazil") that include people wearing braces, retainers and headgear.

For pure viewing pleasure, the braces archive at infotech (infonet.simplenet.com) boasts 95 meg of photos. Unfortunately they are not very accurately named, so you just have to click and see what you get. I found pictures of people (head and body shots) as well as images of the braces themselves. This site also has a chat room, where you can meet others that share this interest.

More pictures are available at the Braces are Beautiful site at www.plinet.com.braces. These are not especially well named either (I sense a trend here) but are grouped at least by date and the division "images not from TV," which is a start. This is a fast site, though, so you can click away to your little heart's content.

How's your German? The page at www.wrd-online.de is an all German braces site. If you go to photos though, it won't matter what the language is. There is a huge gallery of photos of mostly girls and women wearing braces. There is a special gallery for headgear ("gesichtsbogen") which seem especially painful looking.

Finally, if you haven't seen enough yet, head over to M's Mouthware at xmag@teleport.com and make the subject "site submission."

Past reviews can be found here <-- (beware... it's pretty big)