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Smoking is Kool By Zach Seemayer
When I pull out a pack of Marlboro Reds and slide one between my lips, pull out my gold Zippo lighter, and turn the tip to ember, then walk across campus with smoke emanating from my cig, I ooze suaveness. With Humphrey Bogart or Colin Farrell, the club I join when I light up has members who are the epitome of cool. Everything in our culture that is cool is based on popularity and rebelliousness. Girls want to be skinny because they see models posing seductively in magazines and catalogues. They see girls who are so emaciated that every one of their ribs is clearly visible through their skin. They see women with shallow cheekbones, jutting shoulders, protruding hip bones and think to themselves, “I want to look just like that!” Smoking is the same thing. Think about every noir mystery you’ve ever watched. Think about all the classic black and white actors who puff away in every scene. Think about all the murder, mystery, romance and intrigue that accompany every old celebrity who smoked. Think about Bogart, in his long trench coat, resting against a wall with a gun stuffed into his pocket and a burning cigarette in his hand. Don’t you wish you could be that cool? The rebellious aspect of smoking is tied to the teaching parents force upon their kids. The lessons “health activists” and “educators” try to stuff down children’s throats. “Smoking is bad for you.” “Smoking is nasty.” “Smoking can make you impotent.” When I was in high school, I was in health class, and my teacher was explaining to us that abstinence from sex was the only way we could keep from getting AIDS or knocking someone up. She begged us to remain abstinent. Then, in the next class meeting, she was telling us not to smoke. One of her main reasons was that it caused impotency. If we were supposed to remain abstinent, why was it so important to be able to get an erection? It was incredibly confusing, and I decided at that moment that she had no idea what she was talking about and I was going to have as much sex and smoking as I pleased. Sex is another reason that smoking is believed to be so cool, specifically the post-coital smoking. What’s better after the romantic entwining of two bodies in the throes of passion, than lighting a smoke and puffing away like nothing matters? In fact, in the expansive world of fetish porn Web sites, there are even some that display what is known as the smoking fetish. Soft-core pornography that shows women stripping while smoking a cigarette, proving that smoking is directly linked to the sex drive of some men. The most popular argument against cigarettes is the “bad for your health” attack. Supposedly, cigarettes can cause cancer. So can char grilled meat, hairspray, ink, Los Angeles air, Sunlight, and even the radiation tests you take to see if you have cancer can cause it. Cancer is caused when cells begin to replicate radically, and form malignant cells, which can form into malignant tumors. Since our bodies have only so many replications they can make before the cells start to become malignant, cancer is practically inevitable. If you live long enough, you’ll die of cancer. What are you supposed to do? Not enjoy pounds and pounds of burnt steak? Not spend hours and hours in the scorching sun without Coppertone? Not supposed to smoke occasionally? Also, smoking is believed by some to kill hundreds of thousands of people each year. Now, don’t get me wrong, I fell badly for these people and their families, but do you know how over populated the world would be if smoking didn’t exist? We would be battling starvation at every turn. I, for one, will not stop smoking just because of some witch-hunt being led by the media and anti-smoking fascists. As it is, I can’t smoke in doors, and soon, I won’t be able to smoke at all. I’ll have to buy cigarettes on the black market, and smoke in alleys and in underground smoking dens. When that day comes, smoking will be even cooler. Not only will I be smoking, I’ll be an outlaw, and what’s sexier than an outlaw?
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Smoking is cool. You have to understand what I mean by this statement. I’m not saying that I think smoking is cool, no. I’m saying that, by all criteria that we judge what is and isn’t cool, smoking is categorically cool. The reasons for this are numerous; perceived style, class, and rebelliousness. And it’s important to keep in mind that it doesn’t matter whether or not smoking is dangerous to your health.
