In a candid Vogue interview, Mila Kunis dropped a piece of hygiene advice that’s been making the rounds ever since: “brush your teeth and floss, guys. And if you can’t floss, get like a Waterpik.” It sounds throwaway, but it captures something a lot of dentists have been circling around for years — string floss isn’t the untouchable gold standard we’ve been told it is.
Only about 30% of Americans floss daily, and even the ones who do are often doing it wrong. String floss has been sold to us as the gold standard for a century, and most of what we believe about it doesn’t hold up.
The Sawing Motion Is Doing Less Than You Think
Mila didn’t just toss out a one-liner about Waterpiks — she framed the whole conversation around the fact that most people are going through the motions of oral hygiene without actually getting clean. “Brush your teeth and floss, guys,” she said, almost exasperated, as if she’d watched enough friends skip it to know how common the shortcut has become. And she’s right to be blunt about it. Here’s what dentists rarely say out loud: the back-and-forth sawing most of us learned as kids barely touches the bacterial film that actually causes gum disease. String floss can skim food particles, but the plaque hiding just below the gumline — where periodontal issues start — usually stays put.
Kunis also emphasized in the interview that hygiene has to be non-negotiable, not aspirational. She talked about it the way she talks about basic self-respect — something you do every day, not something you perform when you remember. That mindset matters, because the American Dental Association still lists floss as acceptable, but a widely cited 2016 Associated Press investigation showed the federal government quietly dropped its flossing recommendation because the evidence supporting daily string flossing was, in their words, “weak” and “unreliable.” That doesn’t mean cleaning between teeth is optional. It means the tool most of us are using is not the one doing the heavy lifting.
A few myths worth retiring:
- “If your gums bleed, floss harder.” Bleeding gums usually mean inflammation, not that you need more aggression.
- “Floss picks are just as good.” They reuse the same short strand across every tooth, essentially moving bacteria around.
- “Waxed floss is gentler and more effective.” Waxed just slides easier. It doesn’t clean better.
Why Mila’s Waterpik Comment Actually Holds Up
What made Mila’s Vogue moment land wasn’t just the Waterpik name-drop — it was the honesty behind it. She essentially gave people permission to stop pretending. If string floss isn’t working for you, or you’re not doing it, don’t white-knuckle your way through a routine you’ll abandon by Thursday. Pick up the tool you’ll actually use. She said it without the usual celebrity gloss, and that’s why it stuck. The pushback on water flossers has always been that they’re a shortcut for people too lazy to floss properly. That framing is outdated, and Kunis casually name-dropping one in Vogue is part of a broader shift. Multiple studies published through the National Library of Medicine have shown water flossers reducing gingival bleeding and plaque more effectively than string in specific populations, particularly people with braces, implants, or crowded teeth.
She also made a point that often gets lost in the celebrity-routine genre: consistency beats perfection. Mila wasn’t preaching a twelve-step regimen or a $400 gadget lineup. She was saying brush, floss, and if flossing isn’t happening, get a water flosser. That’s it. Her point — that if flossing isn’t happening, a water flosser is the answer — is exactly what the research supports. The tool people will actually use beats the tool people feel guilty about skipping.
Something Nice: The Water Flosser Worth Considering
If Mila’s advice sent you looking, not all water flossers are built the same. Standard single-motor water flossers pulse one steady stream, which handles the gumline but stops there. The Something Nice AquaClean Duo Water Flosser runs on a dual-motor system, meaning one motor handles gumline and interdental cleaning while the second is calibrated to reach tonsil crypts — those small pockets at the back of the throat where debris and bacteria collect and cause chronic bad breath. No thread of floss has ever gone near that area. It’s a category of clean most people didn’t know was missing.
That last point matters. Halitosis often has nothing to do with your teeth at all. It’s tonsil stones, sinus drainage, and throat bacteria that string floss cannot physically reach.
The Discipline Argument Falls Apart Too
The romance around string floss is that it takes discipline, and discipline builds character. Sure. But adherence data tells a different story. People who switch to water flossers tend to keep using them, because the friction is lower and the sensory feedback — the actual sensation of clean — is immediate.
Behavior change sticks when the tool feels good to use, not when it feels virtuous.
A quick reality check on the switch:
- Water flossers take about 60 seconds a night, roughly the same as thorough string flossing.
- The cleanup is a rinsed reservoir, not a strand of used floss on the counter.
- Sensitivity to pressure is adjustable, which string never was.
The women we hear from at Peak&Pick who made the switch almost universally describe the same thing: they didn’t realize how much they were dreading nightly flossing until they stopped doing it.
What Your Dentist Actually Cares About
Ask a periodontist and most will tell you the specific tool matters less than whether you actually use it. What they care about is disruption of the bacterial biofilm every 24 hours. String can do that if used correctly, which almost no one does. A water flosser does it whether your technique is perfect or not.
The point isn’t that string is useless. It’s that we’ve been treating it as sacred when it was always just one option — and not the best one for most people. Mila had it right: brush, floss, and if you can’t floss, get like a Waterpik.
For more of what’s worth your time in wellness, visit Peak&Pick.
So, be honest — when’s the last time your string floss actually made you feel clean?
