I have a love/hate relationship with my teeth. When I was younger, every time my mother took me to the dentist she was told I had cavities. She began to think the dentist was taking her money. The last time we went to him he told her I had 10 cavities. She took me to a different dentist for a second opinion and I only had 2 cavities! Probably as a result of all those compromised teeth, I have had old fillings which have chipped and needed root canals and/or crowns. I recently had two crowns next to each other (in the back of my mouth) break and now I have a partial. A tooth on the other side of my mount chipped after that and it needs a crown. The partial doesn't fit correctly with the temporary crown, so while I wait for the permanent one I haven't been wearing the partial and at first wasn't smiling or laughing much.
Now the temporarily missing teeth are in the back and aren't very noticeable unless you're looking there, and I just can't go around not smiling or laughing, so I just figure "the heck with it" and smile and laugh anyway. If it bothers people, then they can look away.

A beautiful laugh trumps a beautiful smile any day.

For whatever reason, my teeth have never really bothered me. There are plenty of other things that do (being short, having cellulite, and having a naturally "frowny" face among them). My brother had braces but I didn't. My parents asked me if I wanted them when I was 13, but I said no. When I was younger I did have a retainer for my overbite and (briefly) headgear to wear at night. On top, one of my front teeth sticks out a bit. The rest of my top teeth are straight. On the bottom, the two teeth on either side of the bottom front teeth are pushed back quite a bit because my mouth is somewhat overcrowded. They show when I laugh but it doesn't bother me. I am 36 and just had my first 4 fillings last year (after having skipped my dental visits entirely for almost a decade...oops). I used white strips a couple of times in college (I drink a lot of tea and coffee) and they worked well, but I managed to chip the front off of one of my top front teeth around 2005; that tooth now has bonding on the front, so I am afraid my teeth would not whiten evenly if I tried it again. People tell me I have a nice smile anyway, so oh well. I try to smile as much as possible to combat my frowny face! My smile:

I've always been self-conscious of the gap between my upper front teeth. I never smile fully in pictures and even though I love to laugh, my instinct is to look down or away so no one sees my teeth. I finally decided to do something about it this year and have been wearing Invisalign for the past 5 months. I'm surprised that my front teeth are almost touching now! Hopefully I will be done in 6 more months. So far I like the changes I've been noticing.