When Dabi Adesoye was growing up in Ibadan, a city of 6 million people in Nigeria, everyone called her “Eji”. In Yoruba, Adesoye’s first language, this translates roughly as “gap teeth”. It might have been a compliment – in Nigeria, a space between the top front incisors is seen as a mark of beauty, Adesoye says – but she hated hers.
“The idea that people were looking at my face and the first thing they would see is this massive gap just made me feel so uncomfortable,” she says from her home in south-east London.
