The Cigarette Cool Factor

I wish smoking cigarettes wasn't so fucking sexy.

I'm a product of the vintage hot rod/motorcycle world of yesteryear. My dad was a child of the rebellious 50's, and naturally it rubbed off on me. I'll be 60 next year, and I adore primer black, stripped down, thumb-your-nose-at-the-Status-Quo things. Vintage is cool. Old black and white is cool. The 50's were cool. Face it--the coolest, sexiest, I-don't-give-a-shit guys portrayed in any pictures related to 50's primer-black hot rods or Harleys are doing that smoking sneer. You know the sneer: one eye is almost closed and the other one is looking right into the camera--challenging you to be that cool. Never mind that one eye was probably closed because the smoke that was yet to be filtered by still-working lungs was burning the hell out of it. That didn't matter. What mattered was the eye looking at the camera. It was saying, "Come on pussy... see how cool it makes me look? What are you waiting for?"

When I'm browsing the internet for ideas about things I'm still swayed by pictures of guys with "the look." I'll be browsing for something to do with my Harley, some sort of apparel--hell, even when I was browsing possible hair styles they were there. The ads persist. No wait--they weren't ads, they were just pictures. They may as well be ads though--because they were selling the aura of cool.

I remember a comic in Playboy decades ago--a young boy standing on a chair in front of the bathroom mirror with a cigarette in his mouth. Reflected in the mirror was a cool, rugged, handsome man staring back at him. It was who he saw himself as with the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. I did the same thing. I fell victim to the "cool" factor. I started smoking because it was cool and rebellious. When I realized it didn't add a bit of cool, I saw the light and bowed out of smoking. That was decades ago, but still the mystique of "cool" is still out there. The allure, the draw, the power of suggestion.

It pisses me off because everybody wants to look cool. I'm no different. The difference is that I know it's only an illusion. But damn, it's a strong one.