Confession: When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I wanted to be a smoker so badly. I tried so hard. I wanted to know what all the fuss was about (did it really make you feel as relaxed as people seemed while they were smoking?), and I wanted to be like the models I knew who were smokers - they looked so care-free and confident when they were smoking. Not to mention, super cool and skinny. It's no wonder I wanted to emulate them: images of smoking 90's supermodels were everywhere - on the covers of magazines, in editorial spreads, on billboards, and in candid paparazzi images.
Fortunately for me, I never liked it. Even though I bought lots of different kinds of cigarettes - non-filtered, menthol, vanilla-flavored, ultra-expensive European kinds - none of them ever once gave me a good feeling. So, lucky for me, I "quit" before I ever even started.
Supermodel Christy Turlington was among the 90's supermodels who smoked heavily. In a December 2000 interview with The Times of London, she said, "When I started modeling I wanted to appear more grown up, and smoking easily did that for me. By 16 I was smoking a pack a day."
A PACK A DAY?!
Turlington disclosed in that article that she was suffering from early-stage emphysema. She was only 31 years old at the time. Her father, a heavy smoker, had died of lung cancer three years prior to the publication of the article. Since then, she has been an anti-smoking campaigner.
I'm happy to see less images of models smoking in photographs these days. Just remember that if you never start, you'll never have to go through the very difficult process of trying to quit, or have to deal with the tremendously dangerous effects it will have on your health.
Even if you think you're immune to any impact it would have on your health, think about how much it will age your look: Your skin, your teeth, your hair, your breath.....Strictly aesthetically speaking, it's disgusting.
If you've been needing a sign to quit smoking, consider this to be it.
Watch Christy in this 30-second video to see the severe impact that smoking has had on her
life: