Friday, June 17, 2005

Return of Fetish Friday

Sssssssmokin!

That's right. Smoking is this Friday's Fetish of the Week. Cigarette smoking, cigar smoking, pipe smoking, even bong smoking. If you smoke it, they will come.

After years of being told about cancer and bad breath, smokers are finding their place in the hazy sun. Sites like Kandy's Smoking Fetish are popping up all over the place to celebrate sexy smokers.

What would cause a person to take pleasure from the sight of someone inhaling carcinogens like a cowardly suicide? Probably the same things that lure people into smoking to begin with. The impression that smokers are cool and popular. The youthful idea that people seem more mature with a cigarette dangling from the fingertips or lips. A notion that a cigar adds an element of masculinity or a that pipe lends sophistication to it's smoker.

True, the reality would be laughable in it's irony if the consequences weren't so serious. There's nothing mature about trading your health for an image, there's nothing masculine about a man with a constant wheeze, and there's no sophistication in nicotine stained hair and teeth.

Please don't misunderstand. I don't mean to bash smokers. I still consider myself to be one, though I haven't lit up in seven years. Even now I am known to occasionally stand downwind of another smoker, breathing deeply the tainted air as if to enjoy the nicotine without the cancer. So no, I'm not implying smokers are inherently foolish. But let's face it. It wasn't the smartest thing we did when we took that first drag.

In our defense, and by way of further explanation, we did have some powerful early images directing our perceptions. Our first heroes and heroines of cool have often been associated with cigarettes, from Humphrey Boggart to James Dean and from Bette Davis to Madonna, the cigarette has been an important prop to convey a worldly persona. In Grease, sweet, virginal Sandy's transformation into the hot little vixen who "would" is made complete with the flick of a cigarette. How better could I emphasize the correlation between sex and cigarettes.

It can hardly be surprising to find some men and women might have been hardwired to associate smoke and sex appeal. And let's not forget, we have a very phallic symbol being brought to the lips in mock fellatio. It wouldn't take Freud to figure this one out.

So to those of you who still light up after dinner (at home), or skip the coffee for a smoke break (outside the building), enjoy it while you can and take pictures while you're still young and beautiful enough to sell them. There's a market out there for you baby!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oddly enough, I have run in to 2 people who thought I "smoked sexily" as they put it.
Certainly, I can see the appeal of smoking as a fetish, I once had a caller that wanted me to blow smoke rings around his cock until he came. Wonderful gent really and it was rather like a carnival game to me.

Aside from my blathering on, Humphry just wouldn't be Humphry without that Lucky Strike dangling from his lips and James Dean just wouldn't be the same to me either ;-)