Smoking is injurious to your character

COOL KILLER: Despite the stigma attached to smoking and health reasons, women smokers are growing in numbers.

Featured Blog

Rajdeep Sardesai

Television, for politicians with a vision

Featured Slideshows

Related Headlines

powered by

• Study: Smoking is cancerous; Roadside risk
• Women are at greater lung cancer risk
• Smokers beware! Cancer is for all

Keywords: , Cancer

"The tobacco industry's targeting of women and girls dates back to the 1920s and intensified in the late 1960s with the introduction of women-specific brands,” says the US Department of Health and Human Services in their 2001 report on ‘Women and Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General’.

The report continues to state how advertising campaigns equated smoking with independence, sophistication and beauty and “preyed on the unique social pressures that women and girls face. In the 1970s, women were targeted with advertising for so-called 'low tar' and 'light' brands, with implied claims of reduced risk that the tobacco companies knew to be false.”

Circa 2008. Not much has changed and the women targeting and cool perception about cigarettes exists. Today we have cardamom-flavoured cigarettes, those called silk cut and cigarettes so slim that they have an immediate association with being ‘feminine’. Then of course is the entire debate about if-a-man-can why can’t a woman? The whole women-are-seeking-their-individuality and their independence… Through cigarettes?

In ‘The New Face of Tobacco’, Noy Thrupkaew writes about the stunts used by the tobacco industry to target women overseas and coloured women in the US.

Cigarettes are wrongly associated with empowerment, individuality, and rebellion. “I want to dance to my own music without others’ direction,” says a ballerina in a Japanese ad for slim cigarettes.

India – despite the hookah and beedi-smoking women in rural parts – is one of the many countries where smoking has traditionally and socially been unacceptable for women.

One of the ads in a country with similar traditional views towards cigarettes says, “I’m going the right way -- keeping the rule of the society, but at the same time I am honest with my own feeling. So I don’t care if I behave against the so-called ‘rules’ as long as I really want to.”

But is it just the advertisements? What about the live examples women see around them daily? Many youngsters pick up the stick to “fit in”, a whole lot of them to get that opening with a boss who smokes. Or to assert one’s individuality. Or to look sexy. Or declare one has a mind of one’s own.

It’s not just a city affliction either. During the Yamuna Satyagraha march (against the construction of the Commonwealth Games village on the flood banks of the Yamuna, New Delhi), a group of farmers and villagers had come down from Alvar, Rajasthan.

As one sat chatting with the group, one of the older women pulled out a beedi from her ghagra waistband, went behind a tree and lit up. One asked if it the men and people in her village were okay with her smoking. “Arre haan medam. A lot of women smoke, though many don’t do it openly. We have smoking corners where women gather to chat and smoke. Of course men are not allowed there. One is answerable to society.”

One asked if they smoked only beedis or cigarettes too. “No, no, cigarettes are western influences. Hookah or beedi are still okay. But it depends from family to family.” One asked if she knew that tobacco harmed a woman and if people in her village thought any lesser of her? She knew, somewhat. “Bachche to jan diye maine, ab apni marji kar sakti hoon. Doosron to bolne do. Apne ghar main peeti hoon. Marad kya bolega? Woh bhi to peeta hai.” (I have produced the kids, now I can do as I please. Let others say whatever, I smoke in my house. What will my man say? He smokes too.)

And one wondered. Here was a stereotypical picture of an Indian village woman. Yet it was somewhat aberrant to the stereotype as she was smoking, albeit not a cigarette. Yet, much like the city girls one had spoken to, her justification for smoking was that men did it too and that it was her choice, the world and her lungs be damned. What will make her stop?

After eight years of being in a nicotine grip and getting nervous jitters about being able to quit it or not, one recalls the first puff. It was curiosity. Over the years it became an ugly necessity; despite lung-wrenching coughs, ugly stares from men who think one might be a tart and the fear of delivering a baby prematurely in the future… No, one is not proud of this vice. And yet as one sees young girls puffing away, it is a helpless feeling. It’s a habit that will hook them: But HOW does one convey that? One knows the reasons one wants to quit, but beyond motherhood, what will make the women stop?

Tomorrow: How to quit smoking with Dr Sajeela, Ganga Ram Hospital

Please use the feedback button to leave comments or mail the author: jhoomur.bose@network18online.com