Smoking Isn’t Sexy
- Anonymous
- Aug 4
- 7 min read
FEATURE | RONGOA / DRUGS
Written by Anonymous | Contributing Writer
Illustrated by Scarlett Kean | Contributing Artist
There’s a movement in my group that I hate: Smoking. We were teens during Vaping's rapid expansion of flavours and enough nic to knock you to the ground in one hit, so of course, we all got into it; we were the target audience. But then, most of us grew out of it. Weirdly, it felt like vapes just got lame. But now we’re back with cigarettes, which confuses me greatly because I would have assumed they would be so much more lame? But I guess the aura trumps all? So consider this article your merit-scored year 10 English speech coming back to haunt you, because I really thought we were past this issue, but I guess not, and as a guy in my mid-20s, I’d like to pass on what little unc wisdom I have to anyone who’s considering smoking.
OK, Who put tar in my lungs?
I think what’s so irritating about seeing anyone begin smoking now is that we are well aware of how absolutely unbalanced the risk vs reward is. Like, yeah, of course, meth is bad for you, but at least it feels incredible! Cigarettes, on the other hand, are just Tom Shelby RP for five minutes, for the small price of crippling and deadly health complications.
When you read what's in a cigarette, it’s almost comically evil. It’s as though some scheming man at Big Cigarette™ must have one hand pouring a barrel of tar into a mixer, while twirling his long, curled, evil moustache with the other.
So I’d like to start off with a quick run-down of just a few of the awful things you can find in a cigarette. To figure out if Mr Cigarette just felt like putting evil shit in there.
Insecticides: Caused by agricultural practice, as is the case with all foods we consume. The alarming part is that in tobacco products, we can find traces of the insecticide DDT, a highly toxic organochlorine pesticide, that is banned in most countries. Human use of DDT is a tale as old as time; a chemical we rampantly scaled in use, then realised it was actually creating man-made horrors beyond comprehension… then, decades later, companies finally got forced to look elsewhere.
However, DDT residue can still be found in tobacco products, as DDT can remain in soil and water for decades. It is also used in China and India, where the pesticide is still manufactured. As I said, insecticides are found in most food we consume, but we don’t inhale that food, and tobacco isn’t considered food, so it has looser regulations.
Tar: Fortunately, there is no twirly evil Mr Cigarette with his barrels of road tar, but unfortunately, Tar is unavoidable. Tar, in this context, is simply a condensable residue present in smoke that contains combustion by-products.
Some components of the tobacco plant will turn into tar when smoked, such as the plant fibres, sugars, and proteins. However, many of the ingredients added to a cigarette boost tar output. For example,
Ammonia: A common cleaning product ingredient. When added to cigarettes, it increases tobacco absorption in the lungs, while enhancing the flavour and increasing the smoothing effects of menthol. When burnt, it will turn into formaldehyde, and its properties have been found to increase the addictiveness of the cigarette.
So unfortunately, it seems that you just can’t have cigarettes without carcinogens, though additives definitely make the situation much worse. Tar forms into the sticky residue once in your lungs, which not only contains at least 70 carcinogens, but also just isn’t great for its function. You can probably figure out why, considering your lungs are not the hull of a ship. And the hull of a ship isn’t sexy.
Wait, am I sucking dih?
Ok, now for the mandatory history lesson: How did cigarettes get sexy in the first place?
The tobacco industry simply is the final boss of public relations, and it always has been. Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, is known as the pioneer of PR. He exploited Freudian ideas in the 1929 "Torches of Freedom" campaign by framing cigarettes as phallic symbols of male power through its imagery. The campaign used this while piggybacking on first-wave feminism, by gaslighting women into thinking that smoking was an act of emancipation.
But smoking didn’t get outright sexy until the silver screen. In early cinema, smoking became an essential convention. Pacing was abysmal back then, with dramas having painfully long monologues. Poster child of on-screen smoking, Humphrey Bogart, started this all when he reportedly said the only way to make his monologue more interesting would be to place "two camels fucking" in the background. Instead, the director gave him a pack of cigarettes.
Essentially, smoking was the first subway surfers bottom screen gameplay.
Humphrey's stoic demeanour in his movies helped tie cigarettes in as an early image of suave dominance and virility for men. However, the imagery created for his femme fatale counterparts played into their gender role in a much more direct way.
A femme fatale is a stock character in film noir, often depicted as a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman who manipulates men into dangerous situations. There was some taboo around women smoking in the early 20th century, so cigarettes were the perfect symbol that the character was morally ambiguous. And acts such as having the man light her cigarette - or dare I even say - be given the man's cigarette, were acts that were very horny for 1930s America, and pretty much the only acceptable sexual allegory.
The phallic symbolism was set, and the whole industry held onto the “sex sells” grindset for most of the 20th century. You can find countless examples of vintage cigarette ads framing cigarettes as the gateway to sexual encounters, in the same trad dynamics, or simply with a half-naked woman.
So, unfortunately, when you’re smoking a cigarette, you’re not actually aura farming because it “just has” that energy; you’re actually falling for and perpetuating a century-long psyop of perverted objectification of women and coercion of gender roles to uphold the patriarchy. And the patriarchy isn’t sexy.
(Side note: my favourite example of phallic symbolism is, of course, Joe Camel’s face (you know, the smoking camel), which lowkey looks just like a dick and balls. Not sure if this was intentional, but I found it used as an example in my research, and it really can’t be unseen.)
Aren’t you my friend?
For you, the reader, you probably know everything I’ve already said. You know it’s god awful for you, you know big corporations manipulate people, but why isn’t knowing this enough for people? It’s simple, really. You saw your friend do it; now you do. And here’s where it gets messy.
Nobody today is seeing vintage boobies and running to the nearest dairy; instead, the spread of influence is much more personal. One study showed that just the passive influence of observing a peer smoking is more effective than being directly peer pressured(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0376871611003863). And it’s obvious why, as a seemingly more insecure generation, people want to feel included. This has also been studied, but I’ll tell you anecdotally, it really does suck to have most of the party go outside, and to say no when they invite you out to join.
But I think the grossest part of this movement is seeing pressure put on others to join in. I wouldn’t accuse my friends of being intentionally malicious. I think it would more likely stem from insecurity. Because there are coexisting perceptions: one is the old, that smoking is sexy aura farming, the other is the new, it’s a stupid, stinky addiction. So when I see my friends try to goad someone new into smoking, I think they’re just wanting more people in the camp of the old, with them, to avoid facing the understanding of the new.
So look, if you do find yourself in a position where a friend is offering a cigarette, just ignore it. You don’t need to lecture them back, create tension, but just take what I’ve said so far as hopefully a slightly deeper understanding that everything is optics bullshit and you don’t need to smoke. Your friendship will prevail over the 10-minute intermissions, but addiction will prevail over decades. And addiction isn’t sexy.
Do you want this when you’re 50?
I was talking to my dad about him smoking the other night. He told me that he was known as “Cigarette Sam” when he was in his 20s, because he smoked everywhere he went; before getting in a car, while getting out of a car, his “wallet, keys, phone” check was “wallet, keys, cigarettes”.
My parents managed to stop when they first had me and my brother, but they started again when I was four, and pretty much smoked my whole life.
I learnt how bad cigarettes are when I was a child, not sure if this was through teachers or the horrific pictures on the packages, but I internalised it as something simple: My parents were killing themselves slowly, by choice.
The anxiety of this got me researching the dangers, trying to lecture my parents, throwing out their packets, and crying when I saw them smoking. How could I not? They were going to die if I didn’t stop them.
The worst part was the lying. My mum used to say some variation of “I’m quitting tomorrow”, “me and your dad agreed we’re quitting soon”, “This is my last packet”. Understanding at such a young age how easily my mum could blatantly lie to my face has probably caused issues I need to go to therapy about.
My dad finally stopped in 2021, because he ended up smoking with covid. He said it felt like drinking petrol, and that experience was bad enough to finally put an end to it. He still wants to smoke all the time, but he’s more terrified of starting it up again, knowing how lucky he was to have that experience put him off.
Mum still smokes. I gave up trying.
But I can only be so disappointed. My parents started in an age with disinformation and no social stigma to warn them of the decades-long battle they had signed up for.
Conclusion
There will come a day when the parties stop, when you all get too busy. When that day comes, you won’t be aura farming; you’ll just be harming yourself and those closest to you. It will get in the way of life in ways you never could have expected. It’s so damn easy to start, but do you really know how easy it will be to stop?
Being old with a hoarse throat, making your kids cry, that’s not sexy.
Struggling with nicotine addiction? Call Quitline on 0800 778 778, or visit quit.org.nz for free support.
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