Home > Swampland > Archives > 2008 > May > 02 > Entry
The Nicotine Diaries: Part 2, The Cool Factor
The idea that smoking cigarettes is cool comes from, perhaps, film. There are a lot of arguments to made here and convincingly, the history of cigarettes and film as a partnership is well known.
In Hollywood’s golden era stars were encouraged to smoke because it gave them something to do with their hands while they acted a scene. Icons like Humphrey Bogart — he died of lung cancer in his 50s — made smoking look as though it was a natural, almost necessary act. Betty Davis famously blew smoke in her films, creating a sultry, vixon-like image with her cigarettes.
Yet Kirk Douglas famously talks about his first and last cigarette while filming a scene for the picture “The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers.” Douglas reports that he was encouraged to smoke in the scene and when he attempted, he ran to vomit.
Looking back on my experience as a teenager, lighting up that first cigarette, contemplating just why I lit up in the first place, I suppose peer pressure combined with a desire to look cool played into what would become a delusional belief that a cigarette could indeed contribute to one’s cool factor.
In recent years, months and days leading up to that day one week ago when I put them down, I would look around and see people smoking. I would see men and women with cigarettes dangling from their mouths or pinched between their fingers and think it looked awkward, silly and perhaps stupid. Then I would turn and look at the cigarette in my hand and become, at once, self conscious about the whole, awkward holding it, looking for a way to smoke it without looking as silly as the others I had just observed — no luck there.
As I don’t smoke one day at a time, I find myself desiring a cigarette at various moments, for various reasons. One reason might be stress but another, oddly enough, is that I find myself, for just a moment, missing that extension of myself that, in an odd way, kept me company.
But looking cool, well, that’s just not something cigarettes could ever do for me, I’m convinced.
Comments
By RO
May 4, 2008 9:15 PM | Link to this
CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!
When I see people smoking I am always wondering how could they care so little about their health? I am told it is just the addictiveness that overrides the health concern.
I was fortunate in that I never wanted to look cool enough to smoke. I too think it looks awkward. I have many shortcomings but I am thankful the smoking habit is not one of them.
I hope you are able to continue on in your new found freedom. I have to believe you will feel better for it.
By Butch
May 4, 2008 9:48 PM | Link to this
Robert it can be done!! Sometimes You might get shakey, but You can do it. I’ve had many vices and Smokeing was one of them, but I’ve been Smoke Free for many, many years. Every once in a while and I will bum one from someone I’m with to see if they taste any differen . Guess What, they still Taste Like Sh???????????.I feel much ,much better etc. Take Care, God Bless Our Troops & The USA