Smells like Teen Smokers

[steepholm]

This thought has been worming its way through my mind over the last few days, so now I'm letting it erupt through the skin of my typing fingers. Better out than in. I don't hold any particular brief for it, but I'd be interested in reactions.

The catalyst is yet another article telling adults who enjoy YA literature that they should be ashamed of themselves. This is a particularly lightweight instance of the genre, but I was struck (as I often have been by similar statements in the past) by the writer's confession that "I remember, when I was a young adult, being desperate to earn my way into the adult stacks." (The word "earn" is significant in itself, implying as it does that getting older is some kind of meritorious deed rather than the inevitable consequence of failing to die.)

I do remember thinking as a child that grown-ups had all kinds of enviable privileges (going to bed when they wanted, and the like), but don't ever remember wanting to be grown up for its own sake. However, I've heard many people over the years say that they couldn't wait to do so - and my impression (possibly wrong) was that they saw grown-upness as a more desirable existential state, rather than (or as well as) the chronological key to a set of legal rights and privileges.

The pet theory (really a hypothesis) that's been doggy-paddling through my thoughts is that there's likely to be a strong correlation between people's attraction to grown-upness and the taking up of smoking during adolescence. After all, what attractions could smoking have to a non-smoker? Anyone of my generation or younger will have known from childhood that it's expensive, addictive, smelly, unhealthy and all too frequently fatal in the long term. The main reason I can see for wanting to take it up at 15 or so is that you imagine it makes you look sophisticated and cool in a specifically grown-up way. There are other possibilities - it's no doubt an act of rebellion, for some, for example - but I suspect that that looking grown up is a big driver.

But how to test the hypothesis? A random appeal to the experience of my LJ friends may not be the most scientific approach, but then it's not the most scientific theory in the first place...

Comments

[thistleingrey]

Hmm, amongst my high-school friends who smoked, it was to fit in with a specific crowd in school, not to look grown up per se, I think. Then too, cultural differences: driving was the big grown-up thing, which in CA one can do from age sixteen--it varies state to state here. In areas not laid out for walking or supported by bus, the "freedom" of being able to borrow a parent's car (or having enough family money to get a car of one's own) is significant.

I did want to read adult books at the library, but since I was able to do so without fanfare when I was ten or eleven (and by twelve was abetted by one of the staff, who sometimes saved Star Trek original-series novels for me as they came in--after he'd read them), it wasn't a big deal.

And I don't particularly understand the mindset by which one should be ashamed of reading books marketed to a certain demographic slice. It's not as though reading YA == pedophile, for example.

[steepholm]

Wanting to be able to drive if that's the only practical way to get around strikes me as very reasonable at any age. But I wonder if the "in-crowd" thing - effectively a kind of peer pressure to smoke - isn't connected with being grown up, even if indirectly? What made that group seem attractive, and why did they smoke?

The thing about allocating books to readers by age is perplexing. The arguments produced for it are always fairly negligible and/or incoherent, so the interesting thing for me is why people feel the compulsion to demand it.

[thistleingrey]

Within only my high school, most smokers were the kids whose parents had a bit more money or the kids who wore black self-consciously (little goths). But a fair percentage of the first group didn't smoke--they drank instead, sometimes disastrously. It occurs to me that drinking would fit the aspirational slot for metropolitan middle-class West Coasters which smoking takes in your post, since US drinking is barred till 21 (and leads to fake IDs, etc., not only raiding unwary/uncaring parents' liquor cabinets).

Yes--especially, why consumers latch onto what is otherwise merely convenient from a marketer's perspective. When I was 10-14 (IIRC about twelve years after you were 10-14), there wasn't much YA in the US market. My local branch library had one bookcase for "teen readers": McCaffrey's first Pern trilogy and the Menolly books, S. E. Hinton's hard-edged Outsiders, and a bunch of "classics" (Shakespeare, Austen). Lois Duncan was shelved in the children's section despite featuring teenaged girl protagonists; so were all of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, even the latter-day ones, and Sweet Valley High. Not now, obviously. I don't see that it hurt a nine-year-old to try Lois Duncan and find the story too scary, then come back later--though I can see that it would've been dicey to market Lois Duncan's books to the parents of a nine-year-old or perhaps a twelve-year-old, even then. tl;dr I don't recall much child-directed marketing of books then--perhaps I missed all of it, magically? I think it is more intensive now.

[steepholm]

I was wondering about alcohol. The reasons it doesn't work so well in the context of my own teenhood are: a) I don't think we considered it harmful in the same way as tobacco, and b) it didn't have the same air of being adults only. Even though there were laws that we couldn't buy it till 18 these weren't very strictly enforced (I think it may be different now), but more importantly it was pretty normal for children over twelve or so to have a glass of wine at Christmas, etc. Far more so, anyway, than for them to have been offered a cigarette. In my own case I was habituated to alcohol in small doses by my father (a tot of sherry here, a sip of wine there) from when I was less than three years old. That may have been unusual.

[thistleingrey]

*nods* What you describe is more or less how my father (b. 1930s) described his early encounters with alcohol in Germany, and thus more or less what he did with me: occasional sips from childhood (though I think I was eight or so). For my agemates whose parents also grew up in the US, the childhood sips seem strange; to me, pretending to keep it 100% off limits till 21 seems strange!

Agreed about the difference in potential health risks, or at least, I recall learning more about alcohol's risks as an adult. Then too, airplanes still had smoking sections during the late 1980s, so perhaps 1990s is when both began to tilt. Nancy Reagan's attempted war on some drugs (which reached beyond talk-show viewers from 1985 and included neon-bright bumper stickers reading "Just Say No" tucked into the LA Times) didn't touch nicotine....

Clearly, someone who's now 25-30 (doesn't really remember the 1980s) ought to contribute to the conversation. :)

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Rather like Philip Larkin says at the beginning of the 'Savage Seventh', I wanted to be grown up in order to escape other children... I started smoking when I was 16, which was then a legal age to do so, though parents and teachers were obviously disapproving and it was pretty furtive. (I read 'The Savage Seventh' in Required Writing at about the same age.) Gave up eight years later. Any use?

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

I'm a lifelong nonsmoker but completely agree about wanting to escape other children. To me, adults were rational and kind (obviously not always the case) and other children were randomly cruel. When I got into the lower 6th, people started becoming more reasonable.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

My experience was quite the opposite. When my friends got to sixth form they started turning into bores obsessed with sex, motorbikes and "nipping out for an oily". The tedious isolation of sixth form lingers with me still.

Things got better once they hit their early twenties, though.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes - all data welcome! It may well be that my perspective is an idiosyncratic one - that's one reason I'm asking.

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

I smoked at 16 too but did not like it so i soon gave it up. My peer group all smoked and then i have found the joys of a pipe ten years ago.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Pipes are definitely more pleasant for bystanders (bybreathers?) too.

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

I do think it's party a grown-up thing, but I see bits of an "it's cool" which isn't about being grown-up (and sometimes is an actual rebellion against rules from adults). Also -- and I don't think this is trivial -- sometimes people take up smoking because of wanting to be thin/thinner.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Good point about getting thinner - I'd not considered that one.

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

I never smoked but often wanted to be a grown-up, not to get away from childhood, which was awesome, but to get away from adolescence and other teenagers, who sucked.

That said, I always wanted to smoke. Because it's cool and sexy. I didn't smoke because it kills you. I stand by those assessments now--smoking is sexy and smoking is cool, and I've always liked the smell. It's just that it also kills you. So you pay your money and you take your choice. Even as a teenager, I decided that I'd rather not be killed and be rather less sexy and cool. But that's not to say that I don't appreciate the allure of being sexy and cool. I like a bit of mindless, nihilistic, addictive self-destruction in a person.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I like a bit of mindless, nihilistic, addictive self-destruction in a person.

From that point of view it does have the advantage over alcohol that people seldom lash out at others in a smoke-fuelled rage (though going cold turkey can make them pretty tetchy).

[sovay]

The catalyst is yet another article telling adults who enjoy YA literature that they should be ashamed of themselves.

It seems to believe that people read to buy their way into social groups or at least the appearance of them, rather than reading something because it speaks to them. That seems a very shallow way to approach any connection with art.

The pet theory (really a hypothesis) that's been doggy-paddling through my thoughts is that there's likely to be a strong correlation between people's attraction to grown-upness and the taking up of smoking during adolescence.

I had very little in common with my age group until college, talked more easily with adults than with other children or adolescents, and have never smoked in my life. My grandmother smoked until I was eight or ten, having herself been a lifelong chain-smoker since the age of sixteen; she quit because of the secondhand smoke around me and my brother. For this reason a couple of brands have a weirdly nostalgic presence for me, but it doesn't change the fact that cigarette smoke makes me stop breathing, so it's not like I'd take them up no matter how much I miss my grandmother.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It seems to believe that people read to buy their way into social groups or at least the appearance of them, rather than reading something because it speaks to them. That seems a very shallow way to approach any connection with art.

Ironically it is also an approach stereotypically associated with adolescence.

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

I took up smoking aged about 20; it had less to do with "being grown-up" than with "being like my mates" (and/or, possibly, "being cool").

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think part of my problem is that I've never quite been able to fathom what "cool" means. (At this my daughter would no doubt roll her eyes: "Tell me something I don't know.")

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

If people you like/admire are doing/liking something, then it's cool and you should do/like it too, is basically how I understand it. (Unless you think it's idiotic, in which case you can angst about how you Don't Get It and/or they are Not What You Thought Them.)

[joyeuce]

I have never smoked or wanted to, partly because I have always hated the smell and partly because of the medical magazines with pictures of diseased lungs that my mother used to leave casually lying around! There were many ways in which I tried to fit in with my peers, but that wasn't one of them - and nor was drinking underage, which often went with it. I didn't want to grow up - a family friend nicknamed me Petronella Pan - and never saw any reason to stop reading children's and YA fiction.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I certainly drank underage, but mine was one of those houses where children were habituated to alcohol in small doses from a very early age, so I never particularly associated it with being grown up.

[joyeuce]

We were offered alcohol in small doses, but I never liked the taste enough to have more, until I discovered mulled wine at the end of my first term at Durham!

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

My father smoked a pipe, but gave up when I was about 10 (he thought they might have to send me to a private school and gave up to save money - they did not, in fact), and I like the smell, but smoking gave me even worse sinus problems than the ones I had, so I never really took to it. Brighton was full of dope smokers but I'm not keen on that, either.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I like the smell of some pipe tobaccos, and can imagine getting nostalgic for that in a way hard to envisage with cigarettes.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I took up smoking at sixteen because at that age I was utterly miserable and chasing pretty much anything that would make me feel better for even ten minutes. I'd probably have done it earlier, but sixteen was the age when people my age started to have cigarettes I could swipe, and when people I asked on streetcorners if they could spare a cigarette would give them to me instead of telling me I was too young and/or laughing. Access to tobacco just became infinitely easier that year.

I was always very aware of the risks-- I had a grandmother who died of lung cancer-- and I was as careful as I could figure out how to be: no one I knew, but no one, was allowed to know that I smoked; I was allowed literally one cigarette per month; if I noticed myself actively wanting a cigarette, that put off by three days the date at which I was allowed to have one. I never, ever bought them myself; they were stolen or begged. As a result, I never stopped having the kind of heady high that everyone says wears off after about your first three smokes. Tobacco has a far stronger effect on me than dope and probably makes me legally impaired, walking into trees and such.

As I got older and my life got better, I felt less in need of something to get me high. I think the last time I had one was at a party two or three years ago which turned out to be the sort of party at which everyone else was doing cocaine and molly and orgies, so I felt a cigarette was reasonable. Wouldn't say no to another at that sort of party. Certainly I have never been physically addicted to tobacco, and psychologically it was basically something to lean on.

So I think for me at least the effects of age were that suddenly the substance was accessible, and also I considered myself old enough to handle it-- certain that I could hide the evidence from my parents, and so forth, which did turn out to be the case.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I had to look up "molly". :)

Of course, I forgot to take into account that nicotine actually delivers a high...

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

I immediately thought of the "molly houses" of 18th century London, which were (probably) something entirely different. :-)

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I have smoked maybe three cigarettes in my life and never had any high at all except the feeling of doing something forbidden.

My mother once wrote to me, during one of her periodic attempts to quit smoking, that she was feeling a particular way that she hated and was what had made her start smoking in the first place, but I can't remember the details. I think it was about feeling unfocused and jittery, but am not at all sure. It may have been the same letter in which she pointed out "Hitler didn't smoke. Of course Stalin did, so that is no argument."

One of my favorite high school teachers smoked a pipe in his office (it would never be allowed now -- I'm not sure why it was then, when I never remember any other teacher smoking anywhere but in the teachers' lounge), and the smell of pipe tobacco can still make me horribly nostalgic.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

I wanted to grow up and leave home. Smoking was definitely a part of that. A way to leave home for five minutes at a time, anyhow. (Since, although I was 17, I had to do it in secret.) And it was a (Wildean) pleasure, once I was habituated. I quit in my mid twenties.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I wonder how many teenagers who smoke in secret actually manage to hide it successfully from non-smoking parents? When my stepdaughter was doing it, it was very obvious from her clothes, hair, etc., the minute she walked through the door. I suspect that many parents apply a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I don't always like Laura Miller's writing, but her response (http://www.salon.com/2014/06/06/the_fault_in_our_stars_has_been_unfairly_bashed_by_critics_who_dont_understand_it/) to that article is an astonishingly cutting defense.

I'm with you and liliburlero - I wanted to be grown-up to escape the legal and practical limitations of being a child, and to escape having to be a co-equal with other children, which I really loathed. (Unlike you, I did not find that my peers became more disagreeable in the upper division of high school (which is what we call "sixth form" over here) - they'd always been disagreeable.) I never wanted to be grown-up to be "cool" - I was so terminally uncool in school, I never even tried - and even without surgeon-generals' warnings and the like I always thought smoking was terminally stupid. And drinking - I never did that either. Or pot - I never smoked that any more than I did tobacco.

However, I was given encouragement by a story Isaac Asimov told about himself. He neither drank (allergies) nor smoked, and once he went to a party where he was handed a drink and a cigarette, and he stood there looking unhappy until the hostess looked at him and said, "You don't drink, do you?" "No, ma'am," he said. "And you don't smoke, either, do you?" "No, ma'am." "So then," she said, "what do you do?" And Asimov replied, in his booming voice, "Well, ma'am, I f--k an awful lot."

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Drinking was in a slightly different category for me, because I'd been given it in small doses from a very early age, so it didn't have any mystique.

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

I took it up at seventeen; I'm still not sure why, as I was a fervent anti-smoker before then. Was it to blend in at college? Sadly, I'm still smoking at forty-one. I tend to use it as a safety-valve now, stepping out for a roll-up if I find a situation to stressful or claustrophobic. Actually I was probably like that then, too.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Never having tried it, I probably underestimated in my post the actual pleasure to be had from a cigarette. It never seems to affect people in the way that other drugs do, so I'd assumed it was fairly minimal.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I grew too tall, too soon. I got attention from men when I was eleven. I did not want to grow up. I was horrified by body hair and shaved it all off. I never smoked, but I put that down to the fact my parents did, and the smell made me nauseous and made my eyes sting.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I grew too tall, too soon. I got attention from men when I was eleven. I did not want to grow up.

That sounds thoroughly unpleasant.