Once upon a time, literally any and everything about a celebrity was fair game on late-night shows, talk shows, and comedy staples like SNL — often with a level of cruelty that seems unbelievable in hindsight. We’ve thankfully progressed as a society since those dark days, but every now and then, it seems like maybe the pendulum has swung a bit TOO far in the other direction.
Case in point, the controversy that has arisen around a recent SNL sketch poking fun at “The White Lotus” which seems to have generated an outsized response, including from one of its stars.
This week’s episode of SNL attempted to capitalize on the virality of the “White Lotus” finale to lampoon the Trump Administration and the President’s family. Called “The White Potus,” it reimagined the just-wrapped season of the HBO show as a story about Trump and his cabal collapsing the economy, a reference to the financial crimes of the Ratliff family at the center of the show.
Included in the sketch was a brief scene in which Jon Hamm depicted RFK Jr., who has made an anti-fluoride stance a centerpiece of his political ambitions, ranting against the teeth-strengthening mineral.
To underline the absurdity, the sketch briefly cut to cast member Sarah Sherman as actor Aimee Lou Wood, one of the breakouts of this season of “The White Lotus,” who is known for her prominent diastema, or tooth gap. The cutaway featured Sherman in prosthetic teeth doing an impression of Wood asking what fluoride is, a reference to the long-held stereotype that the British have bad teeth.
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In her Instagram Story, Wood called the joke “mean and unfunny.” Wood’s unique smile has long been the subject of scrutiny, but usually in a positive way, both during “The White Lotus” and her stint on Netflix’s “Sex Education,” because of how refreshing it is in a time when increasingly unnatural-looking veneers have all but become the default in Hollywood.
Wood has even spoken publicly in recent months about how the attention to her smile has helped put a positive spin on the unkind comments and self-consciousness she has endured about her teeth throughout her life. She even remarked that the outpouring has made her natural teeth feel “rebellious.”
So it’s understandable, then, that she might feel stung by SNL’s joke about her smile, and in her Instagram Story, she said that the show had reached out to her to apologize. “I am not thin-skinned,” Wood said in her Story. “I actually love being taken the piss out of when it’s clever and in good spirits.”
“But the joke was about fluoride. I have big gap teeth, not bad teeth,” she went on to say. “I don’t mind caricature — I understand that’s what ‘SNL’ is. But the rest of the skit was punching up, and I/Chelsea was the only one punched down on.”
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As someone who is quite a bit older than Wood and still has many hang-ups about his appearance, I can certainly empathize with how she’s feeling. Someone on TikTok once said I have crazy eyes, and I have been stewing about it for months, and that’s just TikTok, not “the public eye” that Wood deals with. But, particularly as someone with a background in comedy, I can’t help but ask: Is this really that big a deal?
Wood was not even the focus of the sketch. Donald Trump and his cabal were. The blink-and-you-miss-it sight gag about Wood is not even the most memorable or conversation-worthy part of the sketch by far — or at least it wouldn’t be if Wood had not Streisand-effected it into the viral zeitgeist.
But the real issue is Wood saying that the joke was “punching down.” For the uninitiated, the concept of “punching up” and “punching down” is about how structural power is wielded in comedy. It’s a tenet of comedy that “punching up” — lampooning those in power — is noble, while “punching down” in the other direction is bullying. It’s why Black people can poke fun at white people, but the other way around feels uncomfortably like bigotry. It’s why making fun of politicians feels subversive, but Donald Trump mocking a disabled journalist feels… well, frankly disgusting.
So, who is the plucky underdog being bullied in this case? A rich celebrity on one of the most celebrated TV shows of the decade? Who is arguably the breakout star of this season in part becausein a time when veneers so white they’re blue and filler-pumped faces contoured into oblivion have made every TV show lapse into the uncanny valley, Wood’s unique, offbeat beauty feels like a breath of fresh air?
The charge that Wood is some kind of beleaguered victim of systemic cruelty relies on redefining the meaning of the phrase “punching down” and everything it pertains to. That is precisely the kind of overreach that empowers racists and sexists and nefarious characters of all stripes to credulously whine about “free speech” and how “you can’t joke about anything anymore” because they’re no longer allowed to use slurs with impunity.
When a two-second joke about British teeth sparks not only an uproar but an implicit accusation of power-based bullying bordering on bigotry, it makes it all the easier for villains to continue moving the goal posts. Yes, we should all strive to be kinder and more inclusive, especially given how mad it makes the worst among us. But a little lightening up might be in order, too, because stuff like this is not that serious, and trying to make it so doesn’t help anything. It actually does the opposite.
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John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
