Does smoking affect your looks? The answer is yes. It starts when you stick one in your mouth (looks stupid). Then, when you are standing outside in the rain at work, when everyone else is inside (working…like YOU should be).
For many, smoking DOES affect their looks. Hard to debate that. Much more important than looks, however, is the potential for health related issues. That can’t be debated, either.
Being an ex-smoker (14 years off the weed), I can honestly say that quiting was TOUGH. Non-smokers can’t begin to understand how tough it really is, at least for many of us. I would like to encourage anyone thinking about quitting to go for it. It CAN be done. You will NEVER regret quitting. I wish I had never started the STUPID habit to begin with.
The reason I started this thread is because I think it is very important that young people understand the effect smoking will have on their looks over the not-so-very-long run BECAUSE the tobacco companies peddle the drug by trying to pass it off as glamorous and sexy. Sure, non-smokers age as do non-smokers, but they don’t suffer the haggard withering that smokers do. Vanity and beauty are powerful motivations in the young. When Brittney Spears starts to pucker and rot from smoking like Bette Davis did, her appeal as a sexy role model will be gone. For a good example of a famous smoker voice, just remember Fran Drescher’s melodious tones.
Jesus, I hate getting into these threads, but I have to, if only to relate a story about my mother, whom I miss very much, and to maybe point out how hooked on that shit one can be.
She was a 2 and a half pack a day smoker right about the time the airlines started the no smoking rule, and she and I were to fly to Germany that same year.
She swore up and down she didn’t need a cigarette on the plane for the entire trip (9 hours over, 11 hours back). I begged her to go on the patch, but she wouldn’t.
On the way over she would neither eat or drink liquids because she knew she couldn’t have a cigarrete. Result: We arrived in Germany with her severely dehydrated. When we got to Frankfurt, she lit up immediately upon entering the terminal, but she was feeling so bad by then, I don’t think she ever got back to her original nicotine level.
She smoked like a demon the entire time we were there, but could never get back to where she was before we left. She was 70 at the time and had other health problems. Among them was anemia.
The 11 hour trip home was a nightmare. She would have nothing to eat, no water, no nothing. The flight attendants were getting worried, I was worried. We tried to force fluids on her , but nothing worked.
By the time we landed in Atlanta, she was so out of it, I took her to the ER in the hospital where I was then employed. She wound up on a ventilator and died.
Yeah it changes your looks.
Another instance involved a patient of mine whose arterial blood values showed him to be in severe respiratory failure. We were about to take him down to ICU to be intubated and put on a vent, but he asked for one last cigarette beforehand, and one of the nurses gave him one of hers. We never got him off the vent. He died for that cigarette. Not that he wouldn’t have anyway, but it shows how badly he needed the nicotine.
I really miss my mother, but she was German and in Germany, for some reason, kids got hooked on cigarettes very early. I never smoked, but both my parents did, and I can’t get my blood oxygen level above 95%. It should be 100. I’ll let you guess why it isn’t.
I’m sorry if I seem to have hijacked this thread, but to answer the OP: yeah it changes looks and it also changes outlooks.
Thanks
Quasi
Er, this is a bit unfair. Bette Davis did not “pucker and rot”. Have a look at her in All About Eve (1950). If Britney Spears looks half as good at 42, she can congratulate herself. And Bette Davis’s appeal was based on a bit more than being “a sexy role model”. She was a hard-living, hard-working, highly intelligent and gifted actress who worked until her death aged 81.
If you want a better example of premature ageing, look at Brigitte Bardot, though I believe her wrinkles were mostly caused by sun damage.
By all means campaign against stars smoking in public - I would agree that young fans copy their bad habits and I’d support a total ban on smoking in films/tv (even though it detracts from realism), but do you have to be so preachy about it? You are more likely to irritate the people you are trying to convert.
Youth (and unlined skin) is a phase, not a virtue
Ageing is inevitable, not a moral failing
From Arcana’s Journal Article quote:
ok, so which is it?,“obvious” or “poorly-studied?” And what exactly does “grossly undetectable” mean, exactly? Something so obvious that it can’t be seen, or something that you can’t detect, but there’s probably a lot of? I mean, if you could see it?
There ya go. “suggests” (buzzword for "maybe it does or maybe it doesn’t ") that we pay attention to something that paradoxically is “not evident from a visual assessment.” (invisible?) and add it to the list of disorders “seemingly” caused by smoking.
Case Closed.
Call me a skeptic, but I don’t think Drs Koh, Kang , Choi, and Kim will be heading to Stockholm this year.
On a tangentially-related note, Many years ago, I went to See “Penn and Teller” (a very funny/popular pair of illusionists/comedians). One routine involved a cigarette. After lighting up, Penn placed the cigarette between Tellers lips. He then stopped, turned to the audience and solemnly said “If there are any children in the audience, I just want to remind them not to smoke.” He turned back to Teller, stopped, turned back to the audience and added “Unless you want to look really cool.”
Well, now you’re getting into “intruding on personal freedoms” territory. Why should an actor or actress have to hide their legal habit? They didn’t ask to be role models. Are you also going to champion for stars not being allowed to drink alcohol in public?
I couldn’t agree more.