Women and Smoking...
This morning, already, I have had to hold my tongue. Driving the dog to the groomer, I was stopped at a traffic light when I observed a very attractive brunette in a really good looking SUV. My momentary excursion into a pleasurable reverie was rudely interrupted when she decided that this was the perfect time to feed her nicotine addiction. What a disgusting display! There is, arguably, nothing uglier that a woman smoking.
OK, I know some men find it irresistible. Decades accumulation of film noir and porn sites dedicated to women smoking (hey, I get spammed too) prove the point that there are men (and presumably women) who find the image of a woman smoking to be just the thing. Perhaps there is a phallic reference there but perhaps I don't get that because my frame of reference is "larger" than most men (and women?).
The thing is that when a woman sticks that weed filled cylinder of near-newsprint into her mouth and lights up she can transmogrify from a femme fatale into a beast more horrifying than la
chupacabra. But it doesn't stop there. Tobacco stains on the teeth, the putrid odor of stale cigarette smoke on the clothes mixed with her scent du jour... Well, it is just too awful for words. I mean what parents want their little girl to grow up to be,
that?
Ok, lest you think I'm some sort of goody two shoes and just don't get the smoking thing you should know that I once smoked. Yep, cigarettes and cigars. Did so for about two years. My dad smoked. 2 packs a day for about 40 years (and I think it killed him). My grandfather smoked cigars. I think those "Truth" ads about smoking are generally ridiculous and the organization behind them a bit too full of themselves. I think tobacco use by men is generally unimportant to me one way or the other. No, I don't allow smoking in my house but I sit in the smoking sections of various restuarants without complaint. Nor do I express dismay when a male friend lights one up. I just think women are just-grew-a-huge-wart ugly when they smoke.
So, anway, I thought I was in the clear when I turned the corner and headed for the grocery (for breakfast, the missus having left way early to visit a girlfriend). However, as sometimes happens when we think we've dodged a bullet, there it was again. Rather, there SHE was again, still (?) smoking and getting out of her car in the supermarket parking lot. Sans cigarette she was a "looker" without peer. Well formed, well dressed, well coifed, with a walk that made it all an appreciable combination, she totally ruined the effect by heaving the smoke in and out all the way to the doors. I wanted to tell her, but I held my tongue.
Why is it that women, so many of them anyway, think that smoking is a good thing. To keep the weight off (and food out of their mouths)? Do they actually think it makes them look "sophisticated" or "intelligent"? Perhaps they think it is a good example for their children? Oh, maybe that it is helpful to maintaining the air quality around their children? What then? *sigh*
There was nothing to do but bring my frozen biscuits home and tell you about it.
Labels: Culture
