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.