Smoking is injurious to your character

Statutory Warning: Cigarette smoking IS injurious to your health, irrespective of whether you are man, woman or child.

"No pictures of me smoking please,” announced the actress as she lit up her light cigarettes. She was known to be rather forthright about everything from virginity to single motherhood to how she upgraded the diamonds she wore each time she upgraded her man. She continued pulling on the nicotine when her mother entered the room. If the presence of her mother didn’t stop her smoking – a whole lot of Indians don’t smoke “before elders” – why did she have objections to being clicked smoking? Maybe because she was not Shah Rukh Khan? Or because she was a woman?

On another occasion, a celebrity blogger announces on national TV that she has quit smoking. Five minutes before the show was to be recorded, the girl was taking a “few drags” off an acquaintance's cigarette. She blogs about smoking, she smoked before the recording of the show, why did she conceal the fact on TV then? Her parents were watching, or because the nation was watching?

Another instance, a couple sitting in the smoking section of a restaurant were enjoying what looked like a scrumptious meal. After the meal, both of them lit their respective cigarettes. Three boys sitting on the table adjacent to them nudged each other, one whispered, “Dekh, dekh, cigarette pee rahi hai,” and proceeded to nonchalantly check out the girl. It didn’t matter there was a man with her. (Look, she’s smoking a cigarette) The smoking girl did not look up from her empty plate after that and crushed her cigarette midway. Why?

According to the American Cancer Society (Cancer Facts and Figures 2007), an estimated 70,880 women were supposed to die of lung and bronchus cancer in America. While earlier cigarette smoking was rarer amongst women than in men – with 20.3 million (18.1 percent, US) women smoking in 2005 – that percentage difference is fast reducing.

The American Cancer Society report also states that Indian women are at a world Number 3 when it comes to smoking…

Smoking – be it a man doing it or a woman – is primarily a HEALTH issue and should be. However in India, it assumes an entity of its own: Cigarettes are not just cancer sticks, they become yardsticks for character judgment.

NEXT PAGE >>> Cancer stick or character yardstick?

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Given our Number 3 status in the women-who-smoke list – and against popular belief that city-girls smoke more – smoking is not restricted to cities or metropolises. Rural women seem to be smoking more, or are at least consuming tobacco more (gutkha, tambakhu).

A 2006 report by the Centre for Disease Control (CDC, US) suggests that women with less than a high school education are twice as likely to smoke as college graduates. Education here does not mean degrees alone, it means awareness.

Awareness of what smoking does to a woman’s body and in the long run to the children she might bear. Is that why any woman who smokes is automatically assumed to be a bad woman, a bad mother? Yet the figures of women smoking are only rising.

“Where I come from, mothers don’t smoke,” said the lead actor disdainfully as one of the cast members for the play, a woman, pulled on her cigarette. “Aren’t you assuming that I want to be a mother?” she retorted, “I am not asking you to smoke, you are not paying for my cigarettes; as an individual, I have all rights to take my own decisions,” she replied angrily.

The other day at Barista, Vasant Vihar (New Delhi), a group of eight, one boy and rest girls sat smoking along with their cold coffees. Four girls were smoking and so was the boy. As the girls took long drags of their cigarettes, two different tables around them – assorted genders who’d hitherto ignored the group – began checking them out. The girls preened as they sucked in the smoke. The cigarettes got them attention.

When asked what was the first impression they got when they saw a woman smoking, a random set of people gave varied answers. All politically correct, all recognizing the “right” of a person to smoke and yet no one had the conviction to state that women should stop smoking. Or for that matter men.

Kanika, who does not smoke said, “It depends on her body language. If she is cute and the smoking bit goes with her persona, so be it. But if she looks tarty, then I do think she is doing it for attention.” Would she think the same for a man who smokes? “Sometimes yes… There are many wannabes who think smoking makes them cool.” For Manish – who also does not smoke – women who smoke “look sexy.”

“My own decisions”. Attention-getting tools. “Smoking makes them look cool.” “Look sexy”. These are just some of the reasons the youth is smoking. Then there’s the bit about curiosity: Curiosity killed the cat and satisfaction brought it back. ‘Satisfaction’ because cigarettes give the smoker a sense of control, something to do and in the case of many a woman, helps kill their appetite and control their weight. Of course it is supposedly ‘with it’: Go to any of the hookah bars and you will see why. And this cigarettes-are-cool association is nothing new.

NEXT PAGE>>> You’ve come a long way baby?

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"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

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