Grownups lining up for braces.

The hottest summer season accessory isn't really wraparound tones or flip-flops. It's braces. And if you're not convinced, just review Tom Cruise.

Hollywood's largest celebrity has actually been flashing his wired smile on talk shows and at flick premiers. He signs up with a growing number of grownups willing to withstand metal-mouth jabs and mouth sores in the mission for excellent teeth. Nearly a million U.S. adults, mainly in their 30s and 40s, will get braces this year, virtually a 50 percent increase from eight years ago.

``It's the baby boomer mentality: We care what we look like, and we have disposable income,'' says Barb Braaten, a 44-year-old Mary Kay cosmetics saleswoman from Hastings, Minn., who is in the process of getting a bad overbite corrected. 'I'm going to whiten my teeth when I get the braces off. I'd also like to do Lasik eye surgery.' 

Braces may be the next Botox, but they're a lot more work and a lot more pain. Still, Janet Manley, a 37-year-old Eagan, Minn., mom, says eliminating her overbite and straightening her crooked bottom teeth is worth two years of excruciating adjustments and manic brushing to prevent her daily coffee fix from staining her clear braces. 

Manley got her braces before Tom Cruise, but she acknowledges he's helping to make braces seem hip. "Celebrities are the trendsetters. For a while it was breast implants. Now, it's braces." 

He may be the highest-profile patient, but Cruise isn't the first celebrity to get his teeth straightened. Barbara Walters and Cher both wore braces as adults. Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre had them; so did Terrell Davis of the Denver Broncos and our own Randy Moss. 

In the Twin Cities, KARE-TV meteorologist Belinda Jensen wore clear braces on the air for six weeks _ not to straighten her teeth, but to mend a broken jaw. "Having them on the air was fine," says Jensen, who got her braces off in May. "Except talking with them was pretty tough on the inside of my lips." 

The fact that a newscaster no longer squirms at having to wear braces on camera points to an increasing public acceptance. "Most people realize you're just trying to do something to benefit yourself," says Gregg Hipple, a Twin Cities area orthodontist. "Even someone as famous and handsome as Tom Cruise still needs improvement." 

Cruise will reportedly wear braces for about a year. Like most of his forty-something peers, the movie star opted for clear ceramic braces on his uppers and standard metal on his lower teeth. Ceramic has replaced plastic as the material of choice for clear braces. It's stronger and doesn't stain quite as easily. 

There's an even more subtle option these days: Invisalign _ clear, removable aligners, which fit over teeth like a mouth guard without any wires. Invisalign costs about $1,500 more than ceramic or metal braces, which tend to range from $4,000 to $5,500. Doctors say Invisalign works only for minor corrections _ more minor than the effort required to nudge Cruise's pearly whites into better position. 

Cruise needs braces to close his mouth properly, something he has never been able to do. But more noticeably, braces will center Cruise's front teeth so they line up with his nose in the middle of his face. "His midline was so far off, I don't know how women found him attractive," says orthodontist Steven Henseler of Woodbury, Minn. 

The most common reason for braces is cosmetic, although orthodontists say there can be some health benefits. When teeth are crowded or crooked, it's difficult to brush and floss properly, which can lead to cavities and gum disease. 

For Fred Owusu, a 39-year-old, human-resources representative from St. Paul, Minn., who had a big gap between his front teeth, braces are a mental relief. That gap might look sexy on Lauren Hutton, but it caused Owusu to constantly cover his mouth. 

"I notice I'm smiling more," says Owusu, who has been wearing braces for a year and has one more to go. "Having a nice smile does a lot for your personality." 

Chris Roring, a 27-year-old sheet-metal worker from Cottage Grove, Minn., normally doesn't mind the hardware in his mouth. But he wasn't crazy about wearing braces to his wedding in May. 

He wanted to have them temporarily removed, until he found out it would cost $300. 

"It didn't sound too bad until we started getting the wedding bills," Roring says. "I just chose not to smile real big in the wedding pictures." Tom Cruise, on the other hand, plans to have his braces taken off for his next role. They may be trendy in real life, but not in a Hollywood movie.