Je regrette les cigarettes
This article originally appeared in Vogue Australia, November 2007.
I always loved watching Rita Hayworth in Gilda swan across a velvet-curtained boudoir in a risqué, off-the-shoulder gown, as the light feminine grasp of her cigarette lent me the perfect view of her delicate hands. Seeing her, and other 1940s beauties, in action made me me proud to be a smoker.
Promotional photo of Rita Hayworth from the Ronald Grant Collection
Just before a night out, the buckling of an ankle strap and dabbing on of rouge have only ever qualified as penultimate touches to my outfit’s completion. It was once I had indulged in a victorious sip of champagne and gracefully puffed on a pre-departure cigarette that I finally felt I’d achieved silver screen status regarding my outward appearance.
Alas, the resulting pungent fag smoke infused in my hair and clothes completelt overpowered my new perfume, not to mention leaving a nicotine stain covering my tongue and sticking to my mouth. Suddenly I wouldn’t feel quite so gorgeous. To coincide with the introduction of new anti-smoking laws on July 1, 2007, I, like many of my fellow Australians, made the hesitant decision to give up the cancer sticks – for good. Among other smokers, it seemed the general attitude towards to the new laws was quite positive.
Personally, I find smoky clubs and pubs intolerable unless I myself am puffing away - a sort of “can’t beat em, join em” attitude. But with smoking about to be banned indoors, I could no longer herald this contention as a valid reason to continue this brand of internal incarceration. How refreshing to farewell that post-pub stench, clinging to every fibre of my being until I got a chance to shower and launder! Non-smokers can’t begin to imagine why we do this – especially considering our favourite television programs were now spliced with now being spliced with hideous surgical procedures to exemplify government health warnings.
At 27, I’d been a smoker for over 10 years. The experimental dabbling with nicotine during my teenage days saw me swiftly become a smoker. Like most, I started because everyone else did, but I soon relished the experience alone. During school I would disappear to out of bounds areas so the teachers wouldn’t discover me, whereas the super popular girls made a point of getting caught in the toilets to up their “schoolyard cred”. I found it to be an ideal way of dealing with the perils of the teen age – a reliable joy in a sea of bitchy girls and broken hearts. I’d made pitiful attempts to quit before and had lasted a month at most, so the time had come to get serious.
Banned in indoor venues in Australia in 2007, smoking was losing the epitome of cool.
When I did stump out that final cigarette (or what I’d hoped would be), it was not how I’d planned at all. It was actually 2 weeks before July 1 when I was paid a home visit by nasty bout of winter flu. For an entire week, my head was dulled, sore and swollen from sinus congestion. I couldn’t taste the green tea I was drowning in, and my nose was running like a tap. I was glad to be given this bedridden opportunity to signal the beginning of the end but I didn’t announce my abstinence to the world immediately. There was still the very real possibility of failure. It had so far seemed easy enough to refrain, but I knew that wouldn’t last.
As I began to feel better, I began feeling cheated. There were a couple of dates looming on my calendar - going away parties and after-work drinks that would occur just before the new laws were officially introduced. What was I going to do? Spend the whole evening in my own bubble of anxiety, clutching my champagne with two hands lest I unleash my lips on the nearest coffin nail? Or should I pre-purchase a pack I can light up on the night if I really, really have to? Smoker friends who were planning to jump on the quit train were still smoking contentedly, and I was jealous.
Admittedly, I wasn’t completely healthy. A cough was lingering, and I knew smoking would only make it worse. And, due to my abstinence, I’d already noticed a reduction in severity compared to previous aprés-flu chest infections. Quitting really was doing me good. My “should I or shouldn’t I?” dilemma was solved through fate, appearing in the form of one last packet in a duty-free carton bought on the return leg of a recent trip. Those delectable little rods of disease lay at the bottom of my drawer - a fresh, shiny new packet gleaming with the promise of full-flavoured satisfaction. I scooped it up gently. So precious and lightweight it seemed, far from an omen of death. Alas, the picture of an eyeball sans pigmentation staring from the packet wasn’t a lucky sign.
Humphrey Bogart was a famously heavy smoker. The Casablanca star died of esophageal cancer as a result.
Image credit: Warner Bros.
But how could I associate cigarettes with such unpleasantness? How? It was abundantly clear the caused death, death, death, but my little friends had been there for me when others had not. If I failed an exam, the cigarettes understood my anger. If a guy had upset me, my vices absorbed the tears. If a dull conversation was killing me, smoking provided a cache of excuses from “stepping outside” to “nipping up to the shops”. Despite the warnings, the lectures from my anti-smoking friends and my phglem-filled chest, the concept of cigarettes still inspired romantic wistfulness and conjured visions of old-world sophistication.
Generations of celebrities and characters would, for me, always be remembered for the tobacco product they sported. Silver-screen goddesses such as Hayworth are just one small subculture of noteworthy nicotine idols: Sherlock Holmes pipe is as much as a trademark as his tweed hat, while Lieutenant Columbo always solves the murder with a cigar and trench coat in tow. Hunter S. Thompson’s holder was rarely empty, while Catherine Deneuve defiantly clutches the quintessential french fag. Kate Moss reportedly keeps an ashtray next to her bed, and Keith Richards just wouldn’t be as rock’n’roll sucking on a pastille.
Surely it was ok if they did it, I tried to kid myself. My deliberation to quit ended the following evening. I’d only had ine drink when I started asking around for a spark to to set off the nicotine devil. As I was in company that was aware of my recent quit attempt, I went about dribbling an entire opus of pathetic explanations.
“I just wanted one last chance to really say goodbye.”
“Now that I’ve quit for a week I can have a couple and not go back to regular smoking.”
They nodded in disbelief at my statements, and after I’d overcome the initial awkwardness of exposing my re-toxification, I inhale and exhaled as the professional smoker I was.
At the end of the evening, and several cigarettes later, I was officially submerged in a veil of nightclub smoke and painfully aware of the filthy taint at the back of my nose. My tongue seemed to be covered with a stale and acrid film of yellow bitterness, and I was sure I could actually see the poison hanging in the air like a cobweb of chemicals.
Australia and many other countries have outlawed cigarette branding in the hope it deters smokers.
The next day I refrained again, and the day after that, but as soon as the opportunity to have a glass of wine came around, I was straight out the back sucking down those carcinogens. I washed the stench from my hands, brushed my teeth and sprayed on perfume. I was disgusted with myself, but the damage was done. I wanted another. It was around this time that someone sent me The Easy Way to Stop Smoking by Allen Carr. I hadn’t heard of it before but apparently it had sold over seven million copies. I was skeptical, but flipping through those pages soon triggered a series of psychological revelations, such as helping me understand I didn’t just have a habit, I had an addiction. The main philosophy was to think of quitting as “striving for freedom” as opposed to “making a sacrifice”. Simple, yet brilliant.
In the book, Carr openly condemns stop-smoking aids such as gum and patches. If you were trying to cure a heroin addict, he asks, would you give the addict more heroine? If you are trying to curb an addiction, using the drug in a different format will only hinder your progress. He refrains from using “you’re going to die!” threats or “you’re disgusting” accusations; instead, he caused me to question the reason I smoked in the first place, and I swiftly discovered I didn’t even have one. Carr’s method helped me considerably, but I didn’t find quitting quite as easy as the book suggested I might. Once thing is certain about quitting - it is different for everyone.
Inevitably, the haze of July 1 rolled around and the white haze of nostalgia was already thick in the air. Tobacco enthusiasts banded together for one last night puffing in their preferred liquor-laden venues. Cameras flashed upon sexy, cigarette-adorned lips as many attended fag-themed farewells to a classic, deadly past-time. At midnight, when the new laws came into effect, particularly emotional punters offered up renditions of Auld Lang Syne. And where was I during these questionable festivities? Maybe I should have been mourning a soon-to-be bygone era with my compatriots, but I opted to stay home, losing myself in the taste of earl grey, while the much nicer smoke of a built-up log fire hung in my living room. I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything.
Since July 2025, warnings are now required on all cigarettes sold in Australia that contain a filter.
As my new, non-smoking life has continued, I have seen an improvement in cash flow. Last weekend I bought some skirts, during which my usual spendthrift soliloquy was blissfully silent. I have slipped up a couple of times after a glass of wine, bit old habits - correction - addictions, die hard. Regardless, I’m pleased and surprised to say I haven’t reverted to my regular smoking pattern, and I’m determined I never will. The bank balance is healthy, and my olfactory senses are overwhelmed with the good, the bad and the rediscovered. My skin is devoid of blemishes, while the grey patches have vacated the area underneath my eyes. My complexion is much brighter as if I’d be given a fab new face cream. I’m less tired and caffeine actually delivers the boost it’s supposed to.
I know this is shocking, but I suspect I will never truly hate the idea of cigarettes, as understood back when the health risks were still hazy. I may even look back upon my own smoking without regret, and continue to delight in the cinematic sumptuousness of those 40s screen sirens exhaling their little clouds. But what if they inspire me to light up? The solution is simple. I’ll just slap myself out of the sheer stupidity of wanting something that offers nothing in return and pity the fools still holding flames to their fortunes.
