Metrosexual is in now... along with smoking?

An article in today’s Daily Mail (I know I know, I can hear to booing and hissing from here…) has sparked great debate on a forum I frequent. Now, normally I’d just add my own little witty retort to the mix and be done with it, but this article in particular is linked to something I feel very strongly about.

Smoking.

My hatred of smoking is pretty well known by those who’ve known me longer than 5 minutes. I hate it. It makes me feel sick to be around it, I hate the smell, and I get close to wanting to kick the living crap out of anyone who blows smoke at me or my girls or we‘re forced to breathe it in because they‘re too god damn selfish to realise the concept of personal breathing space.

For the record, I have never actually tried smoking. I‘ve never wanted to as I have hated it for as long as I can remember. But this isn’t a hatred without reason, I spent 16 years of my life surrounded by it constantly with my mum and dad both being very heavy smokers. I was constantly ill, have a cough myself like I smoked 40 a day, I was bullied for the smell of it on me and constantly told my parents were going to die because of it.

Well.. They were right. My mum died from lung cancer in 2005. After 40 odd years of addiction. I watched her slowly die from something that she had no control over. It was awful and I’m beyond understanding as to why ANYONE would willingly smoke. You know it’s bad for you, you know one day it will eventually kill you and you will leave behind a huge great gaping hole in the lives of the people you left behind that will never, ever heal.

Ok, so admittedly I’m a bit militant about it because of my mum dying. But yet, my boyfriend is a smoker. I dated a smoker for 18 months when I was 14/15. I hated it. It was disgusting, mainly because he was one of these ‘I don’t care what you think I’m going to do what I like how and when I like’ types, that and being a complete and utter cock, but I digress. I always said from that day on I wouldn’t date another smoker. And I didn’t. Up until May this year that is. Pretty much 10 years of being a good girl and sticking to my smoke-free guns.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not the lie down and take it type (There is a joke, but no, I won’t do it :D), and my boyfriend is fully aware of how much I hate it. Thankfully, he’s the courteous type. He won’t force me or the girls to be around it and knows that if he did we’d be over faster than a man who suffers from premature ejaculation in the Ann Summers bondage section. As much as I hate it and am pretty vocal about it, I can’t and wouldn’t ask him to stop. Simply because it’s not my choice. If he wants to slowly commit suicide that’s his choice as much as it upsets me to think he could end up like my mum… (ooh there I go being all militant again!). I’m not the type of person to force ultimatums on people, “I hate smoking, quit or we’re through”. I just couldn’t do that. As much as I think smokers are selfish for not considering the effects on others, I’m not selfish enough to ask someone to change the way they are to be with me. If they’re special enough, then I just put up and shut up. Ok, less so of the shut up part..

I suppose the sad fact is that as non smokers we kind of HAVE to ‘put up and shut up’. Mainly because it’s not our choice and we have no real say in what smokers do. When the smoking ban was brought out a few years back, non smokers rejoiced in the fact we’d now be able to enjoy a night out or a meal without stinking like an ashtray the next morning and waking up with that god awful smell in our hair. But now we have another problem. People still smoke, and they do it in groups where they CAN smoke. i.e. outside of entrances and in beer gardens, and speaking as a non smoker who has a lot of friends who smoke, unless you’re going to be Little Miss Social Outcast and stay indoors while all of your friends are outside lighting up then again, you have no choice. It’s a catch 22, so even with the smoking ban, we STILL get to wake up stinking, kiss guys who taste like ashtrays and put up with the wonder that is 2nd hand smoke.

But this is where I come to my original point… the article which has caused so much debate on a forum I frequent.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-566351/The-electric-cigarette-gives-nicotine-hit-gets-round-smoking-ban.html

Electronic cigarettes, smoke free, and carcinogen/health effect free (subject to further testing obviously). You simply charge them up and off you go. Pure nicotine without any of the nasties, and a realistic look and ‘smoke’ effect for the Malboro Gestapo. So now us non smokers can rejoice in having to inhale nothing other than steam produced from vapourised liquid nitrogen.. Huzzah!

I have a small problem with this however. It’s glamourising smoking by portraying itself as a fashion accessory. It’s being sold as a ‘fashionable way to get around the smoking ban for all you hip young cool cats’. Fantastic. So instead of having ‘proper’ hardcore smokers with all their ‘RAWR! WE HAVE A RIGHT TO BREATHE IN CARCINOGENIC POISONOUS AIR AND MAKE EVERYONE BREATHE OUR 2ND HAND SMOKE AND YOU CAN’T STOP US! RAWR!’, we’ll have a bunch of metrosexuals and wannabe fashionistas flouncing about with the next generation of fashionable gadgetry. In my personal opinion, NOTHING looks more common than smoking, and nothing looks more tacky than someone smoking thinking they look ‘cool’. But I digress…

So then what happens… “I’ve forgotten to charge my cigarettes, but hang on, I’m addicted to the nicotine.. Oh god oh god oh god” *goes out and buys normal cigarettes, aforementioned catch 22 resumes, person dies an untimely death a few decades later*

I personally think they’re marketing this all wrong. These could be used as a really successful quit smoking aid, and personally, I think they’re going to end up doing more harm than good. They should be trying to help people quit altogether, not glamourise it and make it ‘cool’ again. How long would it be until they find out that these are harmful, and people start dropping dead from their internal organs being frozen by the liquid nitrogen vapour they THOUGHT was steam?

“Would you like an Icepop Johnny? Sure! Here, have my lung on a stick…”

fan-fucking-tastic.