How do you get a million-dollar smile, for mere thousands? Our reporter conquers teeth envy.

Have you noticed that suddenly it's all about teeth? While we were fixated on whose hips got slimmer and whose face got tauter, another beauty development was more subtly taking place. Fashion photos have gone from depicting glum to gleeful, from wasted and waiflike to ebullient and energetic. Models and actresses have begun baring a new erogenous zone: the teeth.

Gorgeous, chiseled, symmetrical and stealing center stage from thousand-dollar shoes and bags: These new luxe teeth, the kind for which Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts and Cindy Crawford have long been admired—and the kind that, with the growing popularity of porcelain veneers, anyone who's willing to invest several thousand dollars and two weeks can have.

I decided to investigate veneers myself, paying a visit to cosmetic dentist Marc Lowenberg in his New York office. "Hair and teeth, that's what it's all about now," Lowenberg says. "We started doing porcelain veneers about 15 or 16 years ago. I's become such a phenomenon that in the same way that it's no longer okay to age gracefully, it's no longer acceptable to have yellowing, aging teeth."