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[plotsnshots-blog]

Smoking is a Health Risk ft. the Effects on Oestrogen

“…They spray hormones on the wrapping papers,” Clark warned him. “To help women lose weight. You’re filling your lungs with oestrogen.”’

It has occurred to me that a lot of my posts do appear to be about women - unsurprising given my own gender, but surprising when one considers that this book is written by a male author from the perspective of a fourteen-year-old boy.

Anywho, as a follow-up post to my last post, I think it is important to educate people on the health risks of smoking and also the impact it has on women’s health in particular, due to this quote above. 

Whilst tobacco companies clearly did have some sly techniques for marketing cigarettes to women, including telling them it would help them lose weight (see my previous post), they definitely did NOT spray hormones on the wrapping papers, so this is just another point in the book where Alf and Clark are stating opinions as fact which are untrue (a common occurrence which makes them equally more annoying and more comedic and more dumb in our brains). Unintentionally or not, there is some truth to Clark’s words - whilst you are not filling your lungs with oestrogen, there has been evidence that smoking does raise the levels of both oestrogen and testosterone in your body (as well as just generally fucking with your hormone system in general). More under the cut.

Firstly, smoking is the biggest bane of the health industry. If nobody smoked, 1/3 of the cancer deaths that do occur would just not happen. It’s the most preventable cause of death globally and causes 1 in 5 deaths. That should be enough to see the enormous detriment of smoking, honestly, but for completeness, here are the health risks:

You could die of:

Lung cancer - causes 90% of lung cancer-related deaths. If you smoke, your risk of lung cancer goes up 25%.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) - 80% of COPD-related deaths are due to smoking. Basically severe lung damage due to smoke particles being stuck in your lungs making it harder to breathe over time. Includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis (types of lung damage). 

Other cancers - your risk increases for cancer almost anywhere in the body

You are at risk of:

Coronary heart disease - smoking damages your blood vessels, and this makes them thicker and therefore narrower (think of the healing process from this damage leaving a thicker “scar” inside) which means it’s harder for blood to flow, meaning your blood pressure goes up. This means your heart has to work harder and is therefore not as efficient, so clots form leading to:

Heart attack

Stroke

Pulmonary embolism (clot travels to your lungs, inhibiting your ability to breathe)

You could develop these conditions:

Type II diabetes - nicotine raises your blood sugar and makes you more resistant to insulin, making you 30-40% more likely to develop type II diabetes

Rheumatoid arthritis - because smoking damages your blood vessels, it causes widespread inflammation (swelling and other injury responses just inside of you) which your body has to use its immune system to react to. This puts undue pressure on it, predisposing your to rheumatoid arthritis which is an auto-immune disease (when your immune system attacks itself)

Cataracts, glaucoma and dry eyes - once again, damaged blood vessels in your eyes raises pressure there which causes glaucoma. Nicotine has also been associated with macular degeneration and therefore loss of vision via cataracts.

Osteoporosis - your bones become weaker and more susceptible to fractures because nicotine affects your ability to absorb calcium which is what is needed for your bones to become strong and also causes inflammation and releases toxins in the body which can damage bone tissue.

Physical changes:

Teeth and gum disease - everything becomes stained yellow and black because of the tar - hugely unattractive. We all know this one from the back of smoking packaging in Australia (go look it up if curious). 

Wrinkling of the skin (including the face) - because nicotine causes narrowing of the blood vessels to your face, there isn’t enough oxygen and vitamin A getting to your skin, causing wrinkles and the appearance of premature aging. Not so hot.

Weight loss - this is true, and probably the only beneficial side-effect (but is it worth it?). Smoking decreases appetite, metabolism efficiency and therefore caloric absorption so you do lose weight. However, think of the nutrient loss and how unhealthy that could be in itself.

Chronic venous insufficiency and deep vein thrombosis - this is the ugly swollen veins and bruised skin that you get on your legs and is due to blood flow issues and clots in your legs due to damage to the blood vessels

Reduction of fertility - for men and women. Smoking also decreases your chances of successful IVF by half. This is because the toxins you inhale can damage your eggs and sperm and cause DNA damage to them.

Decreased immune function - you will get sick more often/you are more susceptible to falling sick.

But here’s the good news aha.  5 years after you stop smoking, you are no longer at risk for stroke and cancers that are not lung cancer. 10 years after you stop smoking, your chances of developing lung cancer will drop by half. Not bad, huh?

Okay so final note: whilst branding companies definitely did not cover the wrapping papers in oestrogen for lady cigarettes, smoking does have a huge effect on your endocrine (hormone) system, and your oestrogen levels do go up. So here is a short bit on the effects smoking has on oestrogen:

So in brief, oestrogens are a group of sex hormones (ikr, not even a single hormone) which are in both men and women, but in very low quantities in men. It is called a sex hormone because it is what gives girls their secondary sexual characteristics - in other words boobs, periods, wider hips and interestingly, more hair on our heads.

They also help us to look after our reproductive systems, and when we are in the process of getting pregnant and pregnancy, help us to fertilise and develop the egg into an embryo and eventually a baby. 

Oestrogen is made in the ovaries but stored all over the body in tissues like fat, muscle and bone. The release of oestrogen in cycles is what’s responsible for periods.

Smoking increases testosterone (the male sex hormone) and oestrogen post-menopause. There are many reasons that this is bad:

The metabolites of oestrogen (things that oestrogen is broken down into) are toxic and potentially carcinogenic (can cause cancer) so you don’t want too much of that

Oestrogen is what some cancers like breast cancers live off and so too much oestrogen will encourage them to grow

Early menopause - data on this is inconsistent and they are unsure as to how oestrogen levels cause early menopause, however women smokers were found to reach menopause at least a year earlier than non-smokers which is significant, because after menopause your oestrogen levels drop and you become at risk of heart and bone disease which needs to be closely monitored and treated (as well as a host of other yucky symptoms I won’t embellish on ahem vaginal dryness and hot flushes etc.)

So yes, a hopefully informative post, but (because it’s medical) less positive than the others (but still interesting, hopefully). TLDR; smoking is bad for your body.

[plotsnshots-blog]

The “Lady Cigarette” - Smoking in the 80s

‘“These are lady cigarettes… That’s why they’re so skinny. They’re shaped for female hands.”'

Under the cut: a history of the smoking campaign targeted at women with some vintage 80s advertisements to sweeten the deal.

Smoking was never intended for women, and women smokers were stereotyped as immoral from as early on as the 17th century, when Dutch painters would depict cigarettes in the hands of women as symbolic of loose behaviour, often identifying them as prostitutes. This reputation was carried into the 20th century in both the US and Europe, where the cigarette was marketed solely at men. Whilst women featured in 1900s tobacco advertisements, this was only a ploy to entice men to purchase the product. In fact, women smoking was so frowned upon that in 1908, women smoking in public were arrested, and in 1921 the state of Columbia proposed a bill to Congress to ban female smoking entirely.

However, the tobacco industry soon recognised that if they could sell cigarettes to the female population, their target market would essentially double. This required the removal of the stigma associated with women smokers, and cigarette brands were quick to seize upon rapid socioeconomic and political change to align their values with social attitudes at the time. 

In 1929 it was thought that the best way to market to women was by targeting their waistlines, so the brand Lucky Strike made the first campaign aimed at women, with the tagline: “Reach for Lucky instead of a sweet.” This campaign was wildly successful, and sales of Lucky Strike cigarettes increased by 200%, making it the most popular brand for 2 years. 

In 1929, the brand piggybacked onto a huge Easter Sunday protest for women’s inequality, by hiring women in the procession to smoke Lucky Strikes as a symbolic “torch of freedom,” which had the doubled effect of changing the symbolic perception of cigarettes and removing the social taboo which affected a woman’s ability to smoke freely in public.

Additionally, one of the lesser effects of WWI was a spike in women smokers and a new take on the cigarette. The environment of the war resulted in women in men’s occupations, trousers and recreational activities, including playing sports and smoking cigarettes. It became a symbol of the new roles and expectations surrounding women post-war and challenged the traditional role of a woman during the time. Marketing changed, starting to depict women smokers in unconventional roles such as fighter pilots. By the 1960s, one third of women smoked.

In 1964, the US Surgeon General published his findings on the damaging and carcinogenic effects of smoking on health. This was generally widely accepted by the medical community and had huge effects on the public with millions of Americans quitting. Changes to tobacco marketing involved the compulsory inclusion of warning labels on tobacco products and ads (see in the pictures included in this post) and the banning of some advertisements altogether.  However, these effects were not completely felt in the 1980s, due to the strength of tobacco marketing and the addictive nature of the cigarette. Numbers began to decline (and have continued to do so) since the 90s. 

Despite the health risks, the late 1960s saw premium brands begin the development of cigarettes which were to be specifically marketed and sold to women, and these were popular until the 90s. The idea was to bring feminise smoking and bring it into fashion. The female-only cigarettes Virginia Slims were released in 1968, “tailored slimmer to fit your hands and your lips,” with advertisements saying things like:

“According to the THEORY OF EVOLUTION, men evolved with fat, stubby fingers and women evolved with long, slim fingers. Therefore, according to the THEORY OF LOGIC, women should smoke the long, slim cigarette designed just for them. And that’s the THEORY OF SLIMNESS.”

The 80s and 90s saw the release of these longer, skinnier cigarettes for women (growing from the average 70mm to 164mm). The target market became young professional women who were fashion-conscious. Other marketing strategies for glamorising cigarettes (apart from using celebrities) included decorative packaging like on the Eve cigarette (also owned by Virginia Slim; see picture for decorative paper), and companies making licensing agreements with fashion brands to use their names such as (the most successful) Yves Saint Laurent (even though Mr Laurent himself admitted he doesn’t smoke his own brand of cigarette because he didn’t like the taste), Givenchy and Cartier. 

Thus cigarettes changed for women from representing prostitution to being more manly and again to attracting men. Similarly the tobacco industry seized upon attitudes and values to sell cigarettes as both equality (in the eyes of feminists) and being your own woman. Whilst the tobacco industry is definitely still both socially savvy and incredibly wily, hopefully with appropriate health education and laws, their time is over (for both men and women).

Here are some other funny (nowadays) cigarette advertisements produced during the heyday of the lady cigarette: