Nicotine: art, aesthetic, and agent of disease

Forgive me Lord, for I have engaged in discourse.

Smoking is without a doubt history’s unhealthiest habit. In its earliest days in the 1500s, it was believed that smoking had many benefits and this continued well into the 1940s. Those supposed benefits are no match to the many diseases it causes. Yet, for many decades, nicotine has still been consumed in a variety of ways. One thing that has remained the same is the image of smoking, which greatly contrasts the health issues it causes. 

Artists have been depicted with cigarettes almost as frequently as they're seen with a pen or paintbrush. We look back to the great artists of the past and they’re often smoking a cigarette: Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolfe, Zora Neale Hurston and Raymond Carver are all depicted smoking, with a desk not too far away. Nicotine isn’t the only vice: a glass of wine or a cup of coffee are frequent companions to writers, both past and present. If the majority of artists smoke, even now when the health detriments are as plain as black and white, surely that means that nicotine lends something to the creative process?

In the short term, yes. Nicotine provides an immediate, quick sense of relaxation making it easier to concentrate. But that small sense of relief is hunted by withdrawal symptoms so in the long term, smoking does nothing at all to improve productivity or creativity. Cigarettes are just pernicious company, they have no influence on the life of the art whatsoever. The life of the artist is another story. It’s interesting how prevalent the myth that smoking is beneficial to the artistic process is, especially when writers are well aware that they know about the deadly effects of smoking, albeit romantically. American writer Kurt Vonnegut said “Cigarettes are a classy way to commit suicide.” Surely modern technology has aided the writing process enough that an artist wouldn’t have to consider setting fire to their lives for a spark of inspiration, yet I have even wondered what a cigarette would do for my own writing. My nurse mother would be so disappointed.

Credit: Flavor Wire

Smoking being socially accessible for women also helped contribute to its romanticisation. (A lot of the pictures I found of female writers smoking were on Pinterest.) Prior to the First World War, a woman smoking was deemed unladylike and suggested she had ‘loose morals’. Often women smoking in art were prostitutes. The Roaring 20s allowed women to have a little more freedom and that included the freedom to smoke without social or legal ramifications. The flapper, the inimitable symbol of the decade, rebelled against the restrictive norms of women from head to toe: a bobbed hair cut, short dresses and of course a cigarette in hand. Women who smoked were cool, confident and stylish. This is heavily reflected in the advertisements at the time. Smoking companies realised that half of their potential market wasn’t smoking, so they raced to create campaigns that acknowledged the growing feminist movement. American Tobacco began to call their Lucky Strike cigarettes ‘torches of freedom’ and hired several women to smoke them while protesting against inequality. We see the Marlboro Man, a symbol of rugged American masculinity, later in the 50s, but the Philip Morris Company designed the Marlboro cigarette in 1924 with women in mind.

Smoking’s frequent appearance in art, especially film, greatly contributed to its romanticisation. The Golden Age of Hollywood saw smoking glamorised on and off-screen. Films such as Casablanca and Breakfast at Tiffany’s include smoking that is now deemed as ‘iconic.’ American Tobacco paid several film stars such as Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper and Spencer Tracy thousands of dollars to promote their products. Beautiful, wealthy and famous people handling your product is quite the endorsement. We’ve never stopped trying to emulate the aesthetic of Golden Age Hollywood. We can see it in the existence of numerous moodboard accounts on Instagram and the thousands of images on Pinterest. Black and white films made smoking look especially visually appealing, with the focus on the star’s conventionally attractive face and the smoke adding an allure to them that a regular person could never possess. People understand smoking to be a key part in creating that aesthetic and the key health risks smoking possesses are not a deterrent.

Of course, all the art and aesthetic surrounding nicotine is a dangerous distraction from the health risks it causes. It causes 70% of the cases of lung cancer. Damage to your lungs from smoking can also lead to pneumonia. It also causes cancer in many other parts of the body including mouth, larynx (voice box) and stomach cancer. Smoking damages your heart and blood circulation, increasing the risk for conditions including coronary heart disease and stroke. It reduces fertility in both men and women and can cause many risks during pregnancy such as miscarriage and stillbirth. Smoking kills more than half its users, more than 8 million people a year. 1.2 million of those deaths are from exposure to second-half smoke. Inhaling anything that isn’t oxygen into your lungs is bad, no matter what people who vape say about it being less dangerous than cigarette smoking. It is a risk to you and everyone around you. Yet, the Pins persist.  

It may seem insincere to use what is now a social media buzzword to describe the romanticisation of smoking. But there is no other way to describe the phenomenon other than pretty privilege. Along with all the health risks that smoking causes, the smell is awful, causing bad breath and teeth loss. Smoking causes premature ageing, facial wrinkles and causes a greyish appearance to the skin. Ageing and its physical effects aren’t a bad thing but smoking is. We’re a very shallow society, smoking causes all of this and yet we still romanticise it. The dangers seem to be part of the appeal to people (if bad, why hot?) The health risks are depicted very graphically on the packets. Pretty privilege. It’s even more egregious when you factor the treatment that fat people get in comparison. A few scrolls down from a fancam of an actor smoking, there will be a post of a fat person happily going about their day and the comments are full to the brim of vile hate in the guise of caring for their health. These fatphobic people are obviously not smart enough to be doctors, as they would know, unlike smoking, fatness doesn’t inherently mean poor health. Popstar Lizzo proves this each and every time but the stupidity and spite continues. Smoking adverts in the 1920s used weight loss slogans to advertise to women. The risks people are still willing to impose on themselves to avoid being fat is appalling and shows that toxic diet culture is still alive and well.

1929 Lucky Strike advert.

Nicotine has created a long deadly canvas in human history. Humans have continually adapted smoking for its sale and consumption, bringing new life to the death-dealing product every decade. Whenever we gush over stills of smoking in Golden Age of Hollywood films or share a new board on Pinterest for ‘seasonal inspiration’, you bury awareness of the lethal dangers that smoking imposes and make room for your own grave. We can all agree that there are much safer and more visually appealing aesthetics to adapt for the summer.

For tips to quit smoking, read more on the NHS and the World Health Organisation websites.