(Even though this article is 36 years old, so much of it is still relevant today.)
And there's already evidence of this. According to a recent study conducted for the National Institute on Drug Abuse by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research in Ann Arbor, 18 percent of college aged women smoked cigarettes last year, compared to 10 percent of all college men. Traditional research hasn't had much to say about women an smoking, so no one knows for sure what's behind this female lure to light up. But several important theories are starting to emerge. For many women, cigarettes are perceived as a way to look glamorous, sophisticated, and even as a way to keep weight off. Other women smoke because it relieves the intense stress of their careers, of trying to balance a job with a healthy relationship or perhaps with a family. And researchers are beginning to speculate that nicotine may help women not only to relax, but to organize their thoughts-and that for some reason, it may be more addictive for women than for men.
Many women who start smoking start when they're teenagers. In 1984, for example, 20.5 percent of female high-school seniors questioned by the National Institute on Drug Abuse said that they smoked. "For adolescents, smoking is part of becoming independent," says Zira DeFries, M.D., a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City, and the director of Mental Health Services at Barnard College. "It makes you feel grown up. Traditionally, smoking has been associated with feeling masculine. Well young women now have the prerogative to do what males do, and they're adopting male behavior as a means of expressing autonomy."
"I started smoking in tenth grade because it was the cool thing to do, and I was into the cool image," explains a 29-year-old executive. "Smoking was anti-establishment, anti-grown-up. It set you apart from what you were supposed to do."
By the time a young smoker enters college, cigarettes have often become a way of life. There's a physical connection as well as a psychological one. "I began smoking in eight grade," says one 28-year-old writer. "I went to Catholic school, but hung out with the hoodlums' who went to public school, and they were infinitely cooler in my eyes, an of course, they smoked. I smoked furtively for years, and then in college, when I was free to do it, I got hooked. Even then I enjoyed the physical aspect of smoking. It's satisfying to fill up your lungs with smoke. I really get a nicotine rush, especially from the first cigarette I smoke after not being able to, like after emerging from a movie theater."
Cigarettes serve an even more important function once a smoker finds herself in the fast-paced world beyond school. The executive explains, "When I sit down to talk to someone, I don't feel settled until the cigarette is lit. The lit cigarette sets the stage; it's the starting point of the conversation. Now that I'm settled, I have everything I could want. I'm ready to direct my attention to the person I'm with. When I have a cigarette, I forget all my other desires-I don't need anything else in the world." Adds the writer, "I can use smoking as a prop in social situations. If I'm feeling awkward at a party, I definitely head for the bar and pull out the cigarettes. It's a good activity for when you're bored or have time on your hands. If you're a really busy person, it's hard to sit still and do nothing-smoking takes care of that nervous energy. Of course, if you're with a nonsmoker whom you don't like, you can light up and create a literal smoke screen between you."
"Smoking a cigarette is a way of taking care of social anxiety in a new or unfamiliar situation," says Dr. DeFries. "It relieves tension by being a distraction; smoking is something to focus on rather than your discomfort and self-consciousness."
But medical researchers and psychiatrists alike now believe there's more to the women-and-cigarettes story than mere social considerations. They've noticed in recent years that women have a harder time quitting smoking than men. And they have also noticed that women are more likely to smoke in response to stress (men, apparently, smoke most heavily in response to fatigue and boredom). It doesn't take much to see that women, especially in their twenties and thirties, are under incredible stress today, and so it stands to reason that we'd see an increase in women smokers-and a larger number who have a hard time stopping.
"I find young women very worried," says Alice Rossi, Ph.D., a professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "They're worried about so many things-whether they should take on the male script and have early and multiple sex partners, about children, and they're also anxious about what being single and firmly career-oriented means. Women, it must be remembered, have only a certain number of years in which to have children. Young men, on the other hand, may not have to be as worried about when they become fathers. And men aren't concerned about becoming a sole provider.
Young men are feeling, if anything, that the pressure is off. No so far for women-and the overall combination is, to say the least, not good for a woman's health." If you talk to enough women-and get them to go beyond the kick of the cool image and the pleasure of the rush-you find that stress is indeed behind their need to smoke. Says one 24-year-old actress, "I don't smoke that much-maybe half a pack a day. But it's better than Valium my doctor had given me a relaxant to help me sleep. I was lying awake at night, thinking about my career, about finding a man who would be willing to help-about how it all might work out. So I took pills for a while. But then I threw out the pills and replaced them with cigarettes. A cigarette break helps me to relax, think more clearly, and it helps me to sleep." A 30-year-old marketing analyst adds, "I've seen a lot of women in middle management quit their jobs. What happens? After devoting years of their lives to making it, they reach the glass ceiling-the level beyond which few women rise-and then ask themselves, Now what? Do I stay in? Do I get married? If I do meet a man, what about having kids? Can I handle a job and motherhood? If you take time off, everyone knows that your career suffers. So I smoke. It helps me to relax, to take things day by day and to evaluate the situation more clearly and realistically."
Dr. Mary Sexton, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, agrees that, in many cases, women are under greater stress than men and that they are also more likely to smoke in response. But she takes this notion one step further. Stress, like boredom and fatigue, is triggered by a chemical reaction in the brain. It is a psychological experience-and so the question for Dr. Sexton and other researchers has become: Do women respond to smoking, to nicotine, differently than men? Does it give them a different kick-help them to relax in some way? What we know so far is that burning tobacco generates thousands of different compound, the most essential is nicotine. Nicotine reaches the brain within seconds, altering brain waves an perhaps affecting the way in which we process information. Alexander Glassman, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at Colombia University in New York City, has been researching nicotine's effect on biochemical systems in the brain, and has also worked with women who want to quit smoking. "It does seem, from the studies available, that women find it more difficult to stop," he says. "And this suggests that they are more vulnerable to the use of tobacco from a biological point of view."
Researchers like Glassman speculate that women may metabolize nicotine differently. Others speculate think the problem may lie in the fact that we respond to our environment differently than men do. Women pay more attention to detail and we have much greater verbal ability when it comes to our emotion. And we also pick up more information via the senses.
Recent studies conducted by Drs. Keith Wesnes and David Warburton, psychologists at the University of Reading, England, have shown that nicotine speeds up the processing of sensory information-helping people evaluate sensory information more quickly.
There is, as yet, no evidence that women are more vulnerable to nicotine than men. But it stands that if women are naturally given to process sensory information, they'd occasionally be more in need of a substance that helps them to "step back," to process this information more efficiently.
If you are a smoker and love smoking, it's hard to keep the big picture in mind. There are, after all, so many compelling reasons to go on smoking-because it feels good, because it's fun and, sometimes, because it's easy to believe, at 27 or even 35, that there's still time. As one smoker says, "I still feel it's okay to smoke. I don't have any bad symptoms, so I feel safe." And there are all sorts of little reasons for not stopping, like the fear of gaining weight. And of course, there's still something ineffably romantic about cigarette smoking. "I love the way a cigarette looks in my hand," says one 30-year-old executive. "Especially if my nails are painted and I have a drink in my hand. I just love that forties movie image - a woman with a cigarette is fast and sophisticated."
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| Cover to the October 1986 "Mademosielle" |
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| The original article. |
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| A Virginia Slims 120's ad in this issue. |
