{"id":76,"date":"2005-03-12T05:51:12","date_gmt":"2005-03-12T09:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/metasj\/2005\/03\/12\/the-sex-appeal-of-smoking\/"},"modified":"2005-03-12T05:51:12","modified_gmt":"2005-03-12T09:51:12","slug":"the-sex-appeal-of-smoking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2005\/03\/12\/the-sex-appeal-of-smoking\/","title":{"rendered":"The sex appeal of smoking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a830'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve long maintained that a group of non-smokers should start up a non-profit advocacy group promoting the <b>sexiness<\/b> of smoking, before even the idea of it has been censured from polite company.  Friends have chalked it up to <b>recurring<\/b> insanity, but I maintain that this is the only sensible point of view.<\/p>\n<p>Happily, I am not alone:<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-left: 40px;\"><i>I discovered that I like smoking.<\/p>\n<p>Not personally. I don&#8217;t smoke.<br \/>\nI don&#8217;t particularly like when others do, but am loath to complain<br \/>\nabout it. I&#8217;ve dated smokers, some of my best friends are, and I think<br \/>\nsmoking restrictions are bordering on insane lately. But I have always<br \/>\nfound the habit slightly distasteful.<\/p>\n<p>And now I know why. They were smoking all wrong.<\/p>\n<p>This man &#8211; forties or fifties, Chinese &#8211; smoked like a character in a film noir. Elegantly. Beautifully. His hands held the cigarette just so. It was delicate yet masculine. Instead of blowing out a guilty jet of smoke to the side, he exhaled a beautiful silver plume around him. He was confident in his smoking, he liked his smoking, and he was<br \/>\nunapologetic. He did not finish with the nervous tap-tap-squish of the<br \/>\nteenage closet puffer who continued the habit into adulthood or the<br \/>\npitch-and-ignore of the furtive doorway smoker. He did it with a final<br \/>\nand decisive chess move of extinguishment. It even bordered on sexy.<br \/>\n<\/i><br \/>\n<br \/>\n&#8211;via <b>belle<\/b> <i>de jour<\/i>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve long maintained that a group of non-smokers should start up a non-profit advocacy group promoting the sexiness of smoking, before even the idea of it has been censured from polite company. Friends have chalked it up to recurring insanity, but I maintain that this is the only sensible point of view. Happily, I am [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetic-justice"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-1e","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}