[ Post a Response | The Sublime Desire of Cigarette Smoking ]
Posted by Casey on May 7, 2008, 9:40 pm, in reply to "Re: Identity"
I didn't really feel like I had any clue why I should find smoking sexy until I was discussing my fetish with my girlfriend at the time. She was taking an anthropology class and mentioned that in general drug use was often a kind of showing off to potential mates. Animals with bright plumage don't get any direct benefit from it, in fact it takes extra metabolic energy and puts them at great risk, but managing despite that risk makes them attractive to potential mates. The health risks of smoking bother me a lot and I would never smoke more than occasionally and would not want to date someone who did... but at the same it's those risks that make it attractive and are the reason I smoke occasionally and would prefer to date someone who does.
Why smoking more than other drugs? I can think of several reasons...
1) It's instinctually obvious. Anyone old enough to talk knows that smoke is unsafe to breath and it makes you cough. So the idea of someone intentionally breathing smoke is something that we recognize as impressive. Needle drugs logically carry some of this obvious danger factor, but we first need to learn that alcohol and other ingestables carry risks before we can make the association for them.
2) It's more dramatic and beautiful. I know this come with heavy bias as I do have a smoking fetish but I think there is something to this. Needle drugs carrying an element of obvious risk but their use is incredibly discrete, not just due to social factors. If heroin were socially acceptable it still would not have the noticability that the act of smoking does. Smoking puts on much more of a show than simply injecting a dose of a drug or consuming a pill. Also even beyond the idea of the "badass" factor from casually accepting risk, fire is another powerful symbol to the human mind and the act of smoking involves obvious demonstrations of control over fire. This may seem silly in a modern context but our instincts haven't change much since we developed civilization.
3) Cultural indoctrination. I list this last because although I think cigarette companies have tried to make smoking more sexy they never could have if the basic groundwork weren't already there. Though our culture is anti-smoking at the moment the vestiges of "smoking glamour" are still around, making for a interesting combinations of messages that smoking is both sexy and dangerous. And of course going with the hypothesis that smoking is sexy mostly BECAUSE of risk, than this is only going to make it seem sexier. No other drug has had quite such a mass marketing campaign to make it seem attractive... or one drawing attention to the risks. It would be hard to explain why cigarettes are sexier than say... marijuana, otherwise.
I actually don't think it has much to do with other drugs being too "badass" or not enough but mostly with the means of usage and culture.
Responses: