Girls must look at themselves for a cure

For the first time in a quarter of a century the number of women smoking is on the increase. According to the results of the General Household Survey released this week, after a steady decline since 1972, cigarette smoking among women has risen by two per cent in the past two years. Look at the figures more closely and it’s the youngest women who are increasingly taking up the habit, with a 5 per cent increase among the 16-19 age group, compared with a 2 per cent fall in the number of smokers among men of the same age.

Among 15-year-old schoolgirls, a third now say they smoke regularly (compared with 28 per cent of boys) and the trend is not exclusively British. The rise in teenage girls smoking is also seen elsewhere in Western Europe and the US. Sadly so are the consequences. Today five women die every hour in the UK from a smoking related disease, and health experts have warned that lung cancer deaths are set to overtake breast cancer as the most common cancer killer in women.

So why now, when we know more than we ever knew before about the risks, are girls in particular starting to smoke? There are many possible explanations: young women have a greater disposable income: with women out at work, they are more likely to go for a drink (and cigarette) at the end of the day; as women increasingly adopt male working patterns the more they adopt male patterns of behaviour (hence the increase in drinking which was highlighted in the report). There is also the heavy marketing by the tobacco industry which spends £100-million a year on promoting its brands – many of them targeted particularly at women – compared with the £10-million spent on health education. One key area of concern is the way young women are influenced by media images of glamorous women who smoke – not just in advertising, but in editorial pictures of models like Kate Moss, with cigarette in hand or Julia Roberts, who is seen puffing her way through her latest film, My Best Friend’s Wedding. Smoking makes you look glamorous. It also makes you thin, or so most teenage girls believe. Once you’re hooked you can’t give it up because you’ll put on weight.

Women become hooked on smoking for the same reasons they become anorexic. Girls are taught to be concerned about their body image from an early age – they learn very quickly that their looks are their currency. Yes, cigarette advertising should be banned; yes, we need more health education in schools, and more careful use of images in the media. But perhaps we also need to tackle something more fundamental – the forces which make young girls worry to an unhealthy degree about the way they look.

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