To Smoke or Not to Smoke?
I was recently asked the question, “What social attitude should we take toward smoking?” Is smoking something that should be tolerated or savored? Is smoking a part of our society we should learn to enjoy or should we stomp it out like a smoker stomping on a cigarette butt? In Florence King’s article “I’d rather smoke than kiss” and Escamilla, Cradock and Kawachi’s article “women and Smoking in Hollywood Movies: A Content Analysis”, I discovered two very different perspectives of this question, and found myself forming my own opinion along the way.
In Florence King’s article “I’d rather smoke than kiss”, King really seems to want to exude the fact that she is a proud smoker. King begins the article by telling us the story of her conversion to cigarettes. King seems to be pro smoking and even states, “I believe life should be savored rather than lengthened” (7) King talks about how smoking wasn’t even considered to be a bad thing until they decided it kills other people too. She talks a lot about the hate in America towards smoking in her article, and she spends a lot of time explaining the decline of smoking in social situations in peoples homes. King uses several insert articles to explain several opinions about smokers and their effect on the economy if they were to quit and how some believe that it could be the decline of the social security system in America. King also uses several examples of television commercials to explain how the government has become anti-smoking. King concludes her article associating the governments view on smoking and race. She says that “smoking is the only thing that the politically correct can’t blame on white males” (32)
In Escamilla, Cradock and Kawachi’s article “Women and Smoking in Hollywood Movies: A Content Analysis”, the three doctors conduct a content analysis on the influence of smoking in cinema. They go on to explain the length they went to in selecting the actresses and the films...