There’s a neat, psychological connection between those built-in beauty accessories, tooth and nail. Exquisite if cared for, hideous when ignored, they’re the stuff of obsession.

Consider tooth: “Your mouth is the center of your presentation to the world,” says Dr. Alan J. Goldstein, a Manhattan specialist in cosmetic dentistry. “If it’s not drop-dead gorgeous, at least it should be something that doesn’t detract from the face.” And nail: “Of course, nails are an obsession,” says Margarete Din, owner of Dinmar Salon in Manhattan and a manicurist to the stars. (Din was rushed to the set of “The Prince of Tides” when Barbra Streisand broke a nail.) “I change the color of my nails every day,” she says. “Once you have nails like this” — she flutters her fuchsia-tipped fingers — “you get hooked.”

This fixation with flawless white teeth and a fastidiously groomed hand has been around for years. It is regularly revived by those goddaughters of dentists and manicurists everywhere, the Farrahs, Vannas and Chers. What’s new, relatively speaking, is the democratization of the idealized tooth and nail. With a little bleach and a drop of Bondini glue, almost anyone so inclined can now procure them.

The new ’92 nail color is sheer and pale or light and true. “Very innocent, very simple,” says Jessica Vartoughian of the Jessica Nail Clinic in Beverly Hills, Calif. “No pearls.”

The nail of choice — oval and not too long — is also human. It’s part of the continuing back-to-natural boomlet after a decade of two-inch-long acrylic extensions.

“I used to have seven manicurists doing extensions,” says Ilana Harkavi of Il-Makiage, a Manhattan salon. (In another era she fit extensions for Diana Ross and Liza Minnelli.) “Now I have only three, and most do manicures. Long nails get in the way now. If you have them, you need to keep nail glue in your purse.”

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