This Was the Olympics of Teeth

At the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina, which officially came to a close yesterday, we bore witness to all manner of physical feats: quadruple jumps on the ice, switch backside 900s on the halfpipe, alleged double touches on the curling rink. In the end, however, two of the most indelible images from these consistently captivating Games actually came inside the mouths of two young, transcendent American athletes.

First up, 20-year-old insta-legend Alysa Liu. The Bay Area-bred figure skater won gold on Thursday night—the United States’ first in women’s free skating since Sarah Hughes won the top prize in Salt Lake City in 2002—following an epic performance to Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder’s rendition of “MacArthur Park.” That was only a small glimpse into Liu’s impeccable taste, however.

Everyone watching the figure skating finals immediately took note of Liu’s halo hairstyle, featuring alternating rings of blonde and brunette that she implemented roughly a month before leaving for Italy. But when she twirled her way into America’s heart with her gold-clinching performance, then posed for a seemingly Mac Dre-inspired photo with her hardware, many fans spotted her sick frenulum piercing for the first time.

Jamie Squire/Getty Images

The piercing—known colloquially as a “smiley”—was a DIY effort by Liu and her sister, Selina. It’s simple, striking, and also a little squirm-inducing. The labial frenulum is a tiny thread of tissue that connects the upper lip to the gum tissue and bone of the upper jaw. You can find yours pretty easily by looking in a mirror and folding your upper lip toward your nose. (The human body has several other frenula as well, including in the lower lip, tongue, brain, and genitalia. You might recall Lena Dunham and Maude Apatow’s characters going to get frenulum piercings in a fourth-season episode of Girls.) When piercing the maxillary labial frenulum with a horseshoe-shaped ring, as Liu did, the jewelry hangs over the front two teeth and is exposed with a smile, hence the name. As Liu explained, she’s had the piercing for two years now, and it was far less painful than it looks.