Cigarette, the word rolls out delectably on your tongue. The rounded curve, the rising smoke, and the diminutive coils of ash, there is so much about cigarettes that kindles one’s fantasy. These alluring pipes of nicotine tempt you to the extent of seeming irresistible. Around one billion people over the world smoke cigarettes, out of which 800 million are men. Cigarettes have captured the fancy of a huge chunk of world population, tobacco trade churns out global profits worth around 35 billion dollars. Despite several smoking bans, anti-smoking campaigns, smoking has continued unabated mostly because the campaigns are nothing more than a farce that become apparent through anti-smoking advertisements before a movie in cinemas just like the national anthem.
A question that you are often asked as a smoker is, “why do you smoke?” Only another smoker would know that people smoke for reasons more than one. Some people smoke because they are/try to be indifferent towards the vicissitudes of life. Some others take to smoking as a mechanism to fight against the ‘sensory overload’ that one encounters in the modern life where there’s constant stimulus to act, but there’s also overwhelming systematic restraint against ‘indecorous’ actions and ‘offensive’ behavior.
George Simmel explains how life in the modern metropolis creates high stress and intensification of nervous stimulation which affects smoking habits. Smoking also helps you to create a desired image of yourself for the society, John Berger calls it ‘presentation of self’ in his book, Ways of Seeing (1995). Some others take to smoking because, well, it is liberating. Surprisingly though, smoking is more popular among men than women. So much so that it is sometimes called a ‘masculine’ interest/occupation. It is generally believed that men are more inclined to smoke than women. In fact, women who smoke have been socially scorned for a long time. They are branded immoral, sexually deviant and what not.
Smoking was the occupational symbol of prostitution for quite a long time. This sort of partial castigations have elicited angry responses among women who tried to reassert their freedom to consume cigarettes as part of a consumer society without being banished from it. Some feminist movements also tried to portray smoking among women as a sign of emancipation, of defying the conventional roles of a mother whose reproductive health is a perennial concern for people around her. “Torches of freedom” for example is a phrase coined by one such feminist group that encouraged women to take up smoking to emancipate themselves.
Historically it was after the first world war, when women started coming out in the public domain of work that a large number of them took to smoking. It could be a way of mediating between the hardships and pressure of handling two worlds at a time, the public and the private. But the risks of smoking remained high for these women.
Rosemary Eliot writes in her essay, ‘Smoking Liberation’ says, “Smoking a cigarette could still mean the loss of a much-needed job, a ruined reputation, and eroded status.” Surprisingly, this was also the time when consumer capitalism was flourishing across the world which also led to excessive commodification of women. Some of the cigarette packs carried highly sexualised images of elite women.
Cigarette advertisements exhorted men to smoke a particular brand of cigarettes if they were manly enough. Quite ironically, these advertisements never portrayed women from working class backgrounds who have been known to smoke beedis or less expensive cigarettes. The aim was to sell along with cigarette the image of a desirable woman. While judicious marketing strategies have helped in gaining more acceptability for women who smoke, there’s still a long way to go for it to be considered absolutely normal. In the year 1908, a woman was arrested for smoking in public in New York.
Closer home, in the year 2019, women still have to face the ire of self entitled individuals lecturing against the bad effects of smoking for women. These individuals come in several guises. They could be ‘concerned’ friends, a neighbor or a complete stranger. There was a huge commotion when a still from the movie, “Lipstick under Burkha” endorsed smoking among women as a sign of empowerment. Women are shamed and humiliated for smoking even in the ‘progressive’ arenas of University campuses. One comes across men flaunting the most distasteful behavior against women who smoke. They could spit in front of you as a gesture of disgust, churn unhealthy rumours about you, even call you sexually promiscuous just because you smoke. These attitudes are downright condemnable and they deserve no place in a civilised society like ours.
Women are as entitled to smoke as anybody else in a consumer society. Not everything in our lives has to revolve around reproduction. We are more than birth giving machines. We are transgressive, we are passionate, and we are capable of making our choices. Despite all that you say, we will continue to smoke, if we wish to, as if a cigarette is all we need to take on the world.