Starting the Habit and Lesbian Sexuality

“I started when I was just a kid. I saw Marlene Dietrich on the big screen sensuously sucking on a long necked cigarette and I knew I wanted to be like her. I wanted to be cool and sexy. Smoking became a part of my identity as a dyke and a lesbian.”
-Mickey*

Lesbians, like gay people in general, can wrap up their sexuality with smoking. Smoking to the young lesbian is a statement of sexiness and rebellion – part of being cool as a gay person. Other reasons for starting smoking include the social stress of being gay, direct targeting by the tobacco companies, higher incidence of drug and alcohol abuse and centralizing community around bars and clubs. Given all of that, it is no surprise that lesbians in California smoke three times more than other women.

It is one thing to hear about statistics. The problem becomes real when you hear about women’s experiences directly. I went out into the community to hear from lesbians who smoked or had smoked. I wanted to get a sense of why they started smoking.

Look at Amber. She started smoking at a relatively young age:

“I started smoking at the same time I came out and started frequenting gay bars here in San Francisco. That was forty years ago and I smoked up until about twenty years ago and finally quit for good. I started smoking actually because it was the only way I could tolerate hanging out in smoky bars and because, back then, it was considered "cool" and sophisticated to do so.”

Amber quit smoking when her longtime partner got cancer from smoking and died from the illness. Amber is now very sensitive to cigarette smoke and has compromised lung function. She is very happy to be free of smoking in her life.

Amber’s story is an interesting one. She started smoking to fit in with the other women in the bars. The lesbian community seems to gravitate around the bars. Drinking and smoking goes together. It is such a shame that lesbians in San Francisco lack community spaces that don’t encourage addictive behaviors.

Tracy is another woman who shared her story with me. She had her first smoke when she was 16. She visited a beach town with some friends of hers. She was tormented about being gay and made a last-ditch attempt at playing straight. She made out with a guy one night and woke up feeling terrible. The next morning she went to a gas station and saw some girls.

“I saw these two girls, super pretty, super light and carefree, seemingly comfortable in their own skin, around my age. I assumed they were straight. They were buying cigs from some old guy who was getting a kick out of them and surely knew they were underage. Anyways, for some reason, something clicked in me and I was like, I want to be those (presumably straight) girls. I bought a pack and forced myself to smoke one after another. I got sick! But, I still kept smoking.”

Tracy smoked for 12 more years and tried everything to break herself of the habit, including running marathons and backpacking. She couldn’t quit even with severe asthma! She finally broke free three years ago when her partner told her she would stop breathing periodically while sleeping. Tracy did not want to die because of her smoking.

Tracy’s smoking reverberates with a lot of people. Internalized homophobia gnaws at the insides of a lot of gay people. Lesbians who hate their budding identities can easily get sucked into self-destructive behaviors like smoking. Hopefully smoking will become less appealing to young lesbians as societal acceptance of homosexuality increases.

Lesbians pick up smoking for a myriad reasons, often related to their sexual identity. The stories above represent just a few of the many experiences other women have had with smoking. With time, it is this writer’s dream that lesbians can come of age loving themselves and detesting cigarettes as a way to express who they are.

Do you have a story you’d like to share about starting smoking? Did your smoking habit have something to do with your sexuality? Share your experiences by making a comment!

Butt Out is a project of Breathe California, funded by the San Francisco Tobacco Free Project, which works to get tobacco money out of LGBT community organizations in San Francisco. We also educate the public about the hazards of smoking and about smoking cessation.

Visit Butt-Out online at http://www.butt-out.org/

*The names of the women who shared their stories have been changed to preserve their privacy.

Hello World!

Cheers everyone! I am cheery today for two reasons. For starters, it is my birthday. At 12:12pm I officially inaugurated my 34th year. I plan to enjoy my special day with family tonight at Chow on Church Street.

The second reason why I am cheery today is because I am starting this blog for Butt Out.

I am committed to Butt Out for deeply personal reasons. Everyone in my family smokes. I grew up in a house hazy with cigarette smoke and had to suffer pent up in cars filled with the noxious fumes. It is bad enough that my parents smoke. Each of my four siblings smoke as well. I dread the thought of losing any of them early to a tobacco related disease. The statistics aren't great. Tobacco kills more people than murder, suicide, traffic accidents, drugs and alcohol combined! What compounds my fear is my frustration in talking to them about tobacco. They won't hear what I have to say. They tell me that I don't have any right to tell them about quitting smoking because I did not smoke myself. They tell me they will quit when they are ready to quit. Hopefully they will quit at the right time.

I became so flabbergasted in dealing with my family that I looked outside for an opportunity to strike out against Big Tobacco. I found Butt Out. Butt Out uses advocates to interact with LGBT community organizations and work with them to adopt anti-tobacco funding policies. By getting organizations to adopt policies, the community is telling the tobacco companies that they cannot buy good will with our good names. They can't pay to look like good guys in our community and to our youth especially. Consider this - fully 43% of our LGBT youth smoke. That is almost half of them! We need to help our youth fight back against the evil influences of Big Tobacco. I feel empowered in my work with Butt Out and look forward to volunteering with them for a long time.

Butt Out is a project of Breathe California, funded by the San Francisco Tobacco Free Project, which works to get tobacco money out of LGBT community organizations in San Francisco. We also educate the public about the hazards of smoking and about smoking cessation. This blog will come out every Wednesday. I will talk about the work that Butt Out is doing, about my personal experiences and perspectives on smoking, about interesting things happening in the fight against Big Tobacco and about tobacco and its impact on the LGBT and larger community. Hopefully you will find this blog chock full of passion, insight, up-to-date information and useful knowledge. Maybe you'll even be motivated to join forces with Butt Out! We are always looking for supporters.

I hope you tune into this blog and feel as passionate about fighting tobacco as I do. Watch this page every Wednesday and keep in touch with your comments. Have a great day!

Visit Butt-Out online at http://www.butt-out.org/