To say smoking does look cool?

[BeachOrPool]

Yes, I know inhaling thousands upon thousands of cancerous chemicals definitely isn't cool!

But there's something about some people lighting up a cig and looking into the distance that looks rather cool and 'suave' to me

I always picture having a deep conversation with a mysteriously handsome but dark horse of a person, looking far into the distance as they respond to my dilemma "That's life, Soph" or some other talk that included clever sayings that I can never think to use at the right moment.

It looks cool.

My executive assistant aunty use to look very classy sitting with her legs crossed and smoking a cig, whilst listening to my dilemmas
I just want to put it out there that I've never so much as taken a puff of a ciggy

No even the most sophisticated person can be reduced to appearing numpty like by a cigarette or cigar. Smelling seriously offensive is never cool. Yellow stained hands, hair, teeth is never cool. A revolting wet cough is not cool. Wrinkled prematurely aged skin is never cool. Addictive behaviour is never cool. Gathering in office doorways in a smelly huddle getting disgusted looks from those who have to run the gauntlet of fumes isn’t cool.

No, I can’t think of a single time somebody smoking has looked cool.

"After all, you've got to die of something."

Wow. Do you have any idea how painful lung cancer can be?

Or how emphysema feels like you're suffocating?

It's just horrible. Why invite that?

"After all, you've got to die of something."

Dying of a smoking related disease is a shit way to die
It isn't a case of being fit and well one minute and dropping down dead the next.

My mum died from COPD - it was called emphysema years ago. She spent years struggling to breathe, her chest sounded gurgly all the time and she coughed and coughed and coughed and used to spit up all sorts of crap. It was horrible to witness. She was blue lighted to hospital many times during the last few years of her life.

She also looked and sounded old before her time, and people used to ask me if she was my grandmother - cat's bum mouth, yellowing fingers, deep smokers voice.

IMO smokers don't look cool because smoking is an addiction. After all why would you choose to stand outside in sleet/wind/rain/low temperatures when you don't have to?

My FIL died of lung cancer. It's a shit way to go.

It never did, and the silly sucky sticks looks just as daft - but they don't stink.

The saying has always been ' a fire on one end, a fool on the other'.

It depends who's doing it. A young Clint Eastwood in the desert? Cool.

Anyone else, ever? Uncool and stinky!

I used to think so, but it’s all down to media representation and advertising which has obviously shifted.

Now I mostly see what looks like children smoking in school uniforms, which I find quite disturbing - even though I was a similar age when I started (15 years ish) and people standing solitary outside work places, in the freezing cold, which is the reality of smoking these days. Plus it just stinks.

Watched my mum die of lung cancer. Not cool.

My grandad, the most treasured person in my life, died of lung cancer. He was 65. Sixty fucking five. Watching him die was harrowing.

My Dad smoked throughout my childhood and only gave up after collapsing on a holiday abroad where his lungs decided to pack in. I've never even had a single puff of a cigarette and can't imagine I ever will, and haven't ever thought anyone with a fag looks anything other than awful.

Thank you Selena

But a young Clint Eastwood I. The desert without a cigarette still looks cool. It’s bothing to do with the cigarette or smoking.

If you look cool you look cool. Giving an uncool person a cigarette doesn’t suddenly make them look cool. It’s ridiculous.

Jacques Brel and Marlene Dietrich, both looked cool as fuck when smoking. Jacques died aged 49 with lung cancer, Marlene lived to 90.

See in my mind it's not young sexy badasses, but people hunched over in the cold trying to shield a lighter from the wind. Then squinty eyes (with crow's feet from all the squinting) glaring through the smoke and thin pursed lips sucking on a little paper tube.

And a scratchy voice punctuated with a hacking cough. Yellowing teeth and stinking breath.

Then to top off looking like a colossal bell end, it gives you cancer and/or impotence.
No it doesn't turn me on at all.

For every one of those pictures with someone smoking the first things that come to mind are:

Stained yellow nicotine fingers
Ashtray mouth and yellow teeth
Stinking clothes
Hacking morning smokers cough (if not yet, will happen eventually)
Low intelligence and/or addictive personality
Pity them for being a smoker and the problems it’s going to cause them in the future and how they will regret it (watched my dad die of COPD)

I was lured into trying smoking by watching the French soap opera Chateauvallon, Chantal Nobel just looked so French and cool dragging on her fag lol.
Fortunatley my first cig was also my last. But yes, I do think it looks cool on

On some people...

The marketing gurus made it look cool and even sold it as a healthy pastime. The reality is very different. I watched an elderly relative for over two years slowly dying of probably smoke related lung cancer. She spent most of the time sat in a high backed chair linked to an oxygen cylinder in her home. Every now and then she would have to go in hospital on a frusamide drip because her respiratory system was so shot that she could not efficiently exhale water vapour in her breath. She eventually died in a hospice, hooked up to a morphine pump.

I am an ex-smoker and never realised how much it absolutely stinks when someone comes in from a cigarette!!

No way when I see people on tv sharing a fag after glam sex on tv (Carrie and mr big ) I just think UGH that must stink and I smoke !!!

This was something we were talking about the other day.

The smell.
The bit of FAG ash...
The hunched back as you stand and you drag it in smoke so your mouth looks odd.

I think it looks stupid, and the smell is nauseating.

Strangely I think vaping looks far cooler, because it looks a bit futuristic and sci-fi. Plus it quite often smells of nothing, or of pastries.

Ugh no. I think people who smoke look absolutely pathetic and I pity them.

My DH vapes.

It doesn't look cool at all, and doesn't come with that 'sexy geezerish' look like fags do.

I've never seen him smoke a fag though

Just as well because I wouldn't like to live with a smoker. I value my home decor and fresh paint too much