OT: Brushing your teeth

[S.Teebas]

Hi,

I have a question regarding brushing your teeth.

When you use tooth paste and brush, well after you are finished brushing and u spit out the tooth paste. SHOULD you either rince out OR not rince so the toothpaste really gets in there and does it's job (i.e whitens? and strengthens teeth etc...)

thanks for you time :)

[SaMantis]

I usually spit out the toothpaste and leave the brush. Brushes all day ... ;)

Seriously, rinse. Commercial toothpastes weren't made to be left on. Plus they make your coffee taste really bad. If you're worried about decay/strong teeth, ask your dentist for some flouride toothpaste that can be left on overnight. Expensive but it works.

[S.Teebas]

Some good advice there SaMantis! (keep it coming guys)

It's just that the back of the tooth paste tube doesn't say weather i need to rince or not?

[Royal Dragon]

I don't use a brush, I just eat the tooth paste. One tube a day I say!!!

[Serpent]

Who wipes your a$$ for you S Teebas?

[prana]

lol

:D :D :p ;)

Anyways, I was thinking, maybe the fluoride and other contents are enough to give you cancer (or some other overdose of whatever in toothpaste) in the future. THen you can sue the company for negligence and failing to advice, and then, you'd be rich and dead.

Ok, maybe thats not a nice outcome. Maybe its better to rinse...

[halfling]

If you swallow it it's suppoused to be really bad on your stomach acid and all. Definantly should rinse it off.

[Leonidas]

.........and why would you ask this question on a Kung Fu forum?

Is it just me or is this place getting more and more off topic.

[Serpent]

Kung fu? What's that?

I thought this was the Health, Personal Hygiene & Isn't America Great Forum.

D@mn, I'm in the wrong room!

[Leonidas]

Oh, so i'm not the only one.

Isn't it a shame that the biggest all time thread is about Jet Li, (still growing even after "The One". :rolleyes: :p), and i know everything there is to know about Judo and BJJ (wouldn't be a bad thing if this place wasn't called kunfuonline.com). You can't say this forum is completely down the toilet..................

and to S. Teebas, if you choose not to spit it out atleast you'll die with pearly white teeth and minty fresh breathe. Thats all that really matters.

[awakenwired]

The dentist prescribed a special toothpaste for me once. You were to brush normally, but were to refrain from rinsing, plus I wasn't suppose to eat or drink anything for 30mins if memory serves. I guess it was pretty potent stuff, sounds like thats the stuff your looking for. Only it's not an over the counter kind of product. ;)

[scotty1]

Rinse. No sense swimming upstream on this one.

If you're a traditional stylist you should be cleaning your teeth with green tea and twigs.

[S.Teebas]

This relates to kung fu because if you get hit in the teeth, well do you think the extra strength provided by proper flouide treatment; could help keep your teeth intact more so that not brushing at all?

[Radhnoti]

Start with fluoride pre-rinse, brush and then finish up with Listerine.

[SaMantis]

Healthy teeth and bad teeth both go flying when struck by fast-moving objects, such as fists or concrete. Healthier teeth just have a higher trajectory.

If a tooth is knocked out whole, the dentist can put it back in place and maybe it will re-root. Healthy teeth have a better chance of doing this.

However, I think it's far less expensive to just brush regularly, rinse, and learn to get out of the way of a punch. :)

[txwingchun]

Originally posted by Royal Dragon
I don't use a brush, I just eat the tooth paste. One tube a day I say!!!

Thanks for the suggestion there's nothing like that clean minty feeling after you take a dump.

[fa_jing]

LMAO!

-FJ

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

let's take a poll:

do you spit or swallow?

[Sharky]

Yeah, basically.

Well done done teebas, you got em good.

[Kristoffer]

I think people who swallow their used up tooth paste + water is sick!! :eek:

[rogue]

The US has superior dental hygene! USA! USA! USA! :D

[Kristoffer]

:rolleyes:

[Sharky]

lol!

it's only funny cos i know deep down, he really does believe it.

[GeneChing]

How Darkie, now Darlie, became East Asia’s favourite toothpaste despite its blackface branding (https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/article/2176817/how-darkie-now-darlie-became-east-asias-favourite)
Taking its branding from the image of performers such as Al Jolson, Darkie was launched in the 1930s, a time when racial discrimination was rife
The name was changed to Darlie in 1989 to reflect public opinion in the West
PUBLISHED : Monday, 10 December, 2018, 1:02am
UPDATED : Monday, 10 December, 2018, 1:31am
Christopher DeWolf

https://cdn3.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/980x551/public/images/methode/2018/12/08/dfc6fd8c-f38c-11e8-bbe8-afaa0960a632_1280x720_183135.jpg?itok=-SqUOVfj

When US television host Megyn Kelly defended blackface Halloween costumes on her new daytime NBC show, the backlash was swift and strong. She was fired within a week. For many, blackface is a reminder of how black people around the world have been oppressed and marginalised for centuries.

You don’t need to look far to find examples. Walk into any supermarket in Hong Kong, Bangkok or Shanghai – although it may not be obvious at first, one of the Asia’s bestselling brands of toothpaste has deep roots in blackface.

In a sea of products with slick packaging designed to evoke minty freshness, Darlie stands out on the shelves for its vaguely retro branding, marked by a black-and-white logo of a man wearing a top hat and a broad smile – the Darlie Man, as he is officially known.

It’s the bestselling toothpaste in China, and in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, “we are either in first or second place for the sale of toothpaste, and our market share ranges from 10 to 30 per cent in these markets”, says David Chiu, regional marketing director for Darlie.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbZ23uskVtk

So far, so innocuous. But if you look closely at the box you’ll notice something unusual: Darlie’s Chinese name translates as “black person toothpaste”. It’s a remnant of a time not too long ago when Darlie was known in English as Darkie, and the Darlie Man was a grinning blackface minstrel.

Kelley Loper, director of the University of Hong Kong’s Centre for Comparative and Public Law, remembers visiting Taiwan in the 1990s and coming across some boxes of Darkie in a local grocery store.

“I remember being really shocked and offended,” she says. “But then I discussed it with friends in Taiwan and they didn’t understand what the problem was.”

continued next post

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyXS9qTsb3U

So how did a toothpaste with a name and logo that many consider to be deeply, irredeemably offensive become so popular in Asia? And what does its continued success say about the state of racism and race relations today?

To answer those questions, you need to go back 85 years to Shanghai, where the Niem family established the Hawley & Hazel Chemical Company. One of its products was a toothpaste that promised to give its users dazzlingly white teeth.

Its branding played on the imagery of performers such as Al Jolson, who painted their faces black to perform in minstrel shows that ridiculed people of African descent.

“Darkie” was a racial slur used against African-Americans in the Jim Crow era, when large parts of the United States were governed by apartheid-style racial segregation. “It doesn’t have the same implications as the N-word, but it’s not far off,” says Barry Sautman, a visiting professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology who specialises in ethnicity in China and Africa-China relations.

https://cdn1.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2018/12/08/b3270456-f38d-11e8-bbe8-afaa0960a632_972x_183135.JPG
Al Jonson in a still from The Jazz Singer (1927). Photo: Alamy

“Blackface is part of a history of dehumanisation, of denied citizenship, and of efforts to excuse and justify state violence,” wrote American race studies professor David Leonard in a 2012 essay.

Because blackface depicts people of African descent as less than human, it helped justify horrific acts such as lynchings, and Leonard says it continues to serve as a justification for segregation and mass incarceration.

There have historically been Africans in East Asia, and Sautman says he doesn’t see much of a history of anti-black sentiment in China. But Asia nonetheless imported Western ideas of race in the early 20th century, which placed black people at the bottom of the hierarchy.

https://cdn1.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2018/12/08/f79763c0-f38c-11e8-bbe8-afaa0960a632_972x_183135.jpg
Vintage advertising for Darkie. Photo: Alamy

“Chinese people basically had no conception of black people other than what they imported from the West,” he says. “This is still often the case in terms of how Chinese think about Africa and Africans.”

Blackface characters had one thing in common: dazzling white teeth. “Because their skin was so dark, their teeth looked really white – so people associated them with white teeth,” says Michele Fan, a Hong Kong-born marketing strategist now based in the United States.

In a decade when blackface imagery was widespread, it’s easy to see how Hawley & Hazel got its inspiration for the Darkie brand.


While Darlie’s image is now a racially ambiguous man, its Chinese name is a reminder that it has not made a complete break from its previous racist branding PHYLLIS CHEUNG, DIRECTOR OF ANTI-DISCRIMINATION GROUP HONG KONG UNISON
The Niem family moved the business from Shanghai to Taipei in 1949, after the communist victory, and then to Hong Kong in 1973. Darkie continued to enjoy success throughout Asia, earning a 75 per cent market share in Taiwan and 50 per cent in Singapore, which drew the attention of Colgate-Palmolive, the brand’s largest competitor. In 1985, the New York-based multinational struck a deal to acquire 50 per cent of Hawley & Hazel.

It was a savvy business move, earning Colgate a near-monopoly in Asian markets, but from the beginning the company was aware of the political implications of owning a brand named Darkie. When word spread to the United States of Colgate’s acquisition, American racial justice groups and Democratic politicians began lobbying for a boycott. Even Colgate’s then-CEO, Reuben Mark, acknowledged the brand was racist. “It’s just plain wrong,” he said in 1989. “It’s just offensive. The morally right thing dictated that we must change.”

But Colgate was loath to harm a brand that was a proven success, so its first steps towards change were tentative. In 1987, it ran a six-month test in Singapore by changing Darkie’s name to Dakkie, without removing the blackface logo. Two years later, the company settled on the name Darlie, and it redrew the logo to represent today’s more racially ambiguous Darlie Man.

https://cdn4.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2018/12/08/c1560cca-f38d-11e8-bbe8-afaa0960a632_972x_183135.JPG
The original packaging of Darkie, sold in China and other Asian countries since the early 1930s. Photo: Alamy

One thing didn’t change, though: the brand’s Chinese name. As a 1990 Cantonese-language television commercial made clear: “Black Person Toothpaste is still Black Person Toothpaste.”

The controversy receded and Darlie continued to thrive, rolling out green tea and jasmine-flavoured toothpaste that further cemented its success in Asian markets.

“I think where it’s really successful and why it’s successful is because of the legacy and the heritage of the brand,” says Singapore-based brand consultant Martin Roll. “If you take a step back and look at a modern retail shelf, it stands out in terms of its logo, its colour, its name, its entire appearance. It comes across with a completely different identity.”

https://cdn4.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2018/12/08/ed008126-f38c-11e8-bbe8-afaa0960a632_972x_183135.jpeg
A Darkie advertisement in China in 1948.

Michele Fan grew up using Darlie and, although she remembers finding its name a bit strange, she says it was simply part of Hong Kong’s retail landscape. “It’s something everyone uses,” she says.

The rebranding seems to have mostly succeeded in removing anything overtly offensive about the toothpaste. Caribbean-American researcher Darah Phillip lived in Hong Kong for two years, but she never noticed anything amiss about Darlie. “I’m glad they changed the logo to be more [politically correct],” she says.

Others are less sanguine. When asked about Darlie, members of the Hong Kong African Association say they are disappointed in the brand.

“My simple answer is ignorance,” says Eboh Manuel Chinuzo, who laments that many Hongkongers are oblivious to anti-black racism, whether on a global level or in Hong Kong, whose small African community deals with issues such as housing discrimination.

Another member of the association, Ezeakunne Sylvester, says Darlie’s history still stings. “A white man in blackface means someone with a bad heart,” he says. “Every bad thing is black but good ones are white. That is the racism we blacks are facing.”

Phyllis Cheung, director of anti-discrimination group Hong Kong Unison, says that while Darlie’s Chinese name is not intrinsically offensive, it still contains the seeds of racial stereotyping.

https://cdn4.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2018/12/08/ed008126-f38c-11e8-bbe8-afaa0960a632_972x_183135.jpeg
A vintage Darkie ad.

“Hong Kong people may not be aware of Darlie’s old image and what it means, since they may not know much about the history of slavery and violence against black people, how offensive blackface is, the pain all this has caused, and the systemic oppression black people are still facing,” she says.

“While Darlie’s image is now a racially ambiguous man, its Chinese name is a reminder that it has not made a complete break from its previous racist branding.”

Darlie’s Chiu acknowledges that the toothpaste’s original branding was “derogatory”, but he says it has moved on from that history. “There has been no change to the Chinese name as Chinese consumers have told us our brand is perceived as trustworthy, international, modern and premium,” he says.

“The direct translations of the Chinese brand name to English terms ‘Black Man’ or ‘Black Person’ are not the best representation of our intent, and they may lead towards a different connotation due to cultural differences.”

With its troublesome past well hidden, don’t expect Darlie to change any time soon. “We are very proud and thankful that the consumers recognise Darlie and like our product,” says Chiu. “We focus not only on delivering the best possible products to our consumers, but also on inspiring them to express their best selves with a bright white smile, whenever and wherever they are.”

I'm so impressed that we have two toothpaste-related threads: OT: Brushing your teeth (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?12362-OT-Brushing-your-teeth) & Brush your teeth with soap ! (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?59599-Brush-your-teeth-with-soap-!)