[ Post a Response | The Sublime Desire of Cigarette Smoking ]
Posted by vesperae I first discovered SBD within the first few days of going online at home in the Summer of 2000, and like many others, I cannot begin to tell you how deeply it affected me. The notion of someone setting out to create a comprehensive online resource tailored for young women who were curious about smoking absolutely blew my mind. The sheer outrageousness of the idea…WOW!!! SBD was filled with female smoking glamour images and clips that were used as illustrations and “how to” tools, combined with detailed text instructions on everything from selecting a brand to how to come out to your family and friends as a new smoker. For anyone with an attraction to smoking, the format made for some incredible and very provocative reading and viewing. And the sheer volume of information was also incredible. I believe that at it’s peak, the site had something like 70 – 100 individual web pages, including additional image galleries and stories, and a separate adult topics site that dealt with awareness of the Smoking Fetish. The site’s creator quietly admitted that she did have Fetish motivations in creating SBD, but the whole tone of the site’s language and approach was to be simply cheerfully pro-smoking and pro-personal choice, while also touching on an awareness of the Risks of smoking, but certainly in about the same way that a print ad for cigarettes does. The warnings were there, but were essentially buried by the glare of glamour and a subtle but persistent encouragement to start smoking as an expression of a young woman’s sensuality, beauty, and femininity. SBD also had a message board, which is still online (although Denise has been gone for at least five years now), and both the site and message board were public and free to view, and free to participate in. Eventually the message board was overrun by people with a SF (no surprise there), but in the early days, many pro-smoking women and novice smoking women did talk about smoking in a whole host of frank and interesting ways, and I have often wondered how many young women who had no concept of people with an attraction to smoking found their way to SBD, and left addicted smokers. One of my favorite things about SBD was her whole focus on how important it was for young women to get all that they could out of smoking, and this meant learning to fully and deeply inhale cigarette smoke, as well as working to deliberately establish and therefore experience the pleasures of repeatedly satisfying an addiction to nicotine. And Denise did this in simple language that young women especially could understand and relate to, and with simple and very clever rationalizations of the Risks and Dangers of smoking along the way. I’ve never been able to decide if what amounted to a very smart and seductive approach to getting young women hooked on cigarettes was subconscious or deliberate on the part of the creator. Could SBD have even been a brilliant and devious marketing project by a tobacco industry operative pretending to be a website hobbyist, complete with syntax and typing errors to perfect the illusion? [Cue dramatic and ominous music…LOL…] In retrospect, I realize that what SBD did for me, more than anything else, was to make concrete and real all of the unspoken thoughts I had about starting to smoke and continuing to smoke. I rediscovered my feelings about smoking in deeper and unexpected ways as I surfed through the pages, and for the first time in my life, I also began to consciously think about and accept the Dark appeal of smoking, as well as the reality of my attraction to it. The thoughts were there long before the day that I first visited SBD, but I didn’t start to consciously play and have fun with them until I’d had the chance to digest the implications of SBD. I would have almost certainly ended up here if it weren’t for SBD, but I believe that SBD speeded up the process dramatically for me. * * * * *vesperae
on March 25, 2007, 5:31 pm
Message modified by board administrator March 25, 2007, 5:54 pm
This week’s forum header image: 
features text from the infamous, but unfortunately now closed, “Smoking By Denise” website. (The image, however, is not from SBD.)
Just typing that again sets a swarm of butterflies loose in my tummy and sends a cascade of little shivers down my spine.
Responses: