# Why does smoking look so freakin' cool?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-smoking-look-so-freakin-cool/571214
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [February 13, 2011, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-smoking-look-so-freakin-cool/571214 "2011-02-13T14:38:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@Scougs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scougs)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2011, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-smoking-look-so-freakin-cool/571214/61 "2011-02-16T18:00:59Z")
I loathe and detest smoking. I hate having to walk past smokers standing in the doorway of my local pub. I rejoiced when Scotland brought in a smoking ban.
However, I recently purchased [this oil painting](http://www.jokingpaintings.com/Paintings-Moths-To-A-Flame.%20(Joan-Crawford).htm), because it is… freakin’ cool.
As a hijack, I would be grateful if anyone could name that film.
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### Author:  [@Dr.Woo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Woo)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2011, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-smoking-look-so-freakin-cool/571214/62 "2011-02-16T22:02:32Z")
> [@Sunspace](#):
>
> Smoking never looked cool to me.
>
> I wonder, though: how is it that one person can grow up in a household of smokers and be totally repulsed by smoking, while another can grow up in a household of smokers and waste no time in taking the habit up?
I’ve wondered this too. Smoking never ever looked cool to me, and I grew up in the '50’s & 60’s, when it was commonly viewed - by many - as grownup and sophisticated and all that. I never got that, and that’s probably the main reason I never smoked.
My parents did smoke, and I knew with a certainty that transcends all doubt that anything my parents did was most assuredly NOT COOL. Plus, living with the odor and the mess repulsed me and I looked at the whole business as being just totally uncool. So I know I never started smoking _because_ my parents smoked. It’s interesting to me that others had the opposite experience.
Doing drugs or ditching school or driving without a license, now THOSE were cool to me, but fortunately I never had the nerve to try those things. This has got to be the only time my weird ass outlook saved me from anything.
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