Gap-toothed women are in vogue

It wasn't until Aguirre noticed iconic gap-toothed model Lauren Hutton in the pages of her favorite fashion magazines that she realized her smile was not only unusual but maybe even beautiful.

"I guess I've always thought of it as a cool thing," says Aguirre, 48, of Concord, Calif.

These days, so does the beauty industry. Gap-toothed models were all over the runways at this season's Paris Fashion Week. Instead of fixing their teeth, some of Hollywood's freshest faces, including Anna Paquin and Elizabeth Moss, proudly sport a midline diastema, the dental term for the gap. And, last month, on "America's Next Top Model," host Tyra Banks sent a 22-year-old contestant from Boise, Idaho, to the dentist to widen her gap. The beauty blogosphere has been buzzing ever since.

Men sport the gap, too, but culturally, there has always been a mystique about diastematic women. In Ghana, Namibia and Nigeria, a gap in women's teeth is a sign of beauty and fertility, says Bernice Agyekwena, a Ghanaian journalist and Gates Fellow of African Agriculture at the University of California-Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.