Another thing…a smoker is declaring to the world that s/he has enough time to waste to smoke that cigarette. Smoking is a leisure activity, for the most part. Now, back in the days when there were no non smoking areas, much less non smoking workplaces, it was common to have a cigarette idling in an ashtray or hanging out of the corner of a smoker’s mouth. This still indicated that the smoker literally had money to burn.
I probably would have taken up smoking if I hadn’t lived with my grandparents for a couple of years. My grandfather always had a cigarette or two idling in an ashtray. That didn’t really turn me off. It was the fact that I had to listen to Grandpa trying to cough up his lungs each morning, and periodically throughout the day. And then I saw him spitting constantly. I AM capable of learning by example.
Also, the movies completely remove the awful aspects of smoking. Like someone said, you can’t smell the actors’ ciggy clothes or taste their ciggy mouths during the kiss. Further, you don’t see Bogart hacking up crud with increasing frequency in successive films. Or see him jonesing for a smoke. But, in fairness, they did show him bogarting cigs.
Hey I’m a lifelong avowed non-smoker and even I find smoking looks cool and sexy. What I want to know is, why haven’t they come up with a cigarette that’s totally safe to smoke by now? Why does it have to contain nicotine?
Because the nicotine is the raison d’etre of smoking. Nicotine is what regulates your metabolism, giving you a boost when you’re slow in the morning and calming you down when your heart’s racing. It’s also the addictive ingredient that keeps sales up.
Those of you that think smoking looks cool…all I’ve got to say is SUCKERS!!!
You got reeled in by huge marketing ploy. It wouldn’t look cool and doesn’t if you see normal people smoking. It’s when you see cool movie stars doing it. Hell, you’d probably think scatting was cool, if you saw those same people doing it.
He didn’t get many roles after he had his esophogus and a rib removed and was down to about ninety pounds, although I think he may have been offered a role in a Hammer Film as “The Creature”.
That was still 57 solid years of cool right there.
Serious answer: Smoking is just a thing to me that neither looks cool nor uncool. It doesn’t make you look like Bogie, and I certainly don’t have this insta-revulsion some folks here seem to have. It can look cool when cool people do it, but I’ve never seen Gertie in her Hoveround chain smoking by the slot machines at Binion’s and thought, “Damn, that’s cool.”
As a youngster growing up in the 70s I (former smoker, ftr) was always way more attracted to “bad girl” types and almost without exception they were smokers. To this day I think some women can make smoking look damn sexy in certain situations. That said, I don’t care for the smell, litter, or anything else about it and doubt I would consider a relationship with a smoker. But on screen or some random pretty girl I’m checking out in a bar…Yeah baby, smoke away.
Tons of good points made in this thread, but this one sticks out to me . . . I doubt smoking will undergo a resurgence due to the popularity of Mad Men, but those people do make vices look amazing.
I feel like that show has also reintroduced to me how cool, casual, laid-back, and sexy one can make drink-holding and sipping. It’s amazing to me that none of the characters on that show ever get obnoxious drunk. Yes, sometimes they get vomitous or violent, but from what I can remember they never get to the “I love you man” stage, or get pathetic or cry-y or silly or blabbery.
Anyways, this is a bit of a hijack, so I’ll stop now.
Why do you guys think smoking seems rebellious? Obviously now it is when no one smokes, but in the 30s-early 80s, it seems like everyone smoked. How can smoking be rebellious if it’s something everyone does?
Or even in its heyday was it still looked generally considered a vice? Was it like non-marital sex or getting drunk occasionally, something that everyone does but that capital-S society sort of looks down on?
Well Freddie pisses himself, Don gets in a drunk driving accident with his mistress in the car, and Don later gets so blackout drunk he loses a whole weekend.
I do agree, though. It does look very slick otherwise.
When you’re in junior high and high school, you’re told not to smoke until you’re an adult by all the Responsible Adult Figures. So, naturally, it’s forbidden fruit. And it sort of WAS looked upon as a vice, or at least a bad habit, for adults.