There is nothing cool about a woman smoking.

Sooner or later, I was going to write about them. I have summoned the moral courage and I will subdue any itch of political correctness and tell them the truth: Female smokers suck.

Recently, I was in a bar along Ngong Road popular with home-brewed beer and I was appalled at the brazen disregard of social order. I saw a group of girls sucking Shisha as liberally as a child suckles the mother.

They were loud. They were vulgar. I hated their guts. In the balcony were young women, puffing with defiance, so palpable they could scare a buffalo back into a park.

It is a free world where women have a right to do whatever they please with their bodies. But I also have a right to tell them the truth. Smoking is bad and makes them terrible candidates for girlfriends, mothers and wives. No amount of euphemism or social radicalism should make men be cowed into claiming it is okay.

In my book, female smokers are mostly desperate for men and for attention. You can almost invariably sense the lack of parental love and sibling neglect in every puff they exhale. Mostly, they wanted more, but life gave them less. They make up for it by smoking.

I am not talking about the college student on experimentation with liquor and various sources of highs. I am referring to a seasoned smoker who even owns a lighter.

The health ramifications of smoking, moreso on women are doubly fatal to be ignored. Smoking is known to break down elastin, the protein fibres in skin that lend firmness and elasticity to boobs, leaving them sagging, damages breast skin and face, depriving it of oxygen and nutrients.

Moreover, smoking badly affects gums, can complicate a woman’s menstrual and menopausal life and SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) cases are more common among female smokers. There are many more dangers than space in this column allows me to list.

Other than health problems, female smokers are social disgraces. Female smokers want to show the world that they are bad girls. They are independent and can do bad by themselves.

Edward Bernays, arguably one of the sharpest PR minds of the 20th century nudged women into smoking as a way of challenging male power

In the famous 1929, New York Easter Parade, women lit cigarettes as a sign of emancipation from male dominion and equality to men.

Bernays was a shrewd and unscrupulous fellow more interested in assisting companies rake in more profit than emancipating women. This was not the last thing he unconventionally popularised by misleading the public. He only exploited women’s aspirations for a better life at the time. Yet, women took it as gospel truth and have been making a mess of themelves, ever since.

I urge female smokers to know that, women are supposed to smell sweeter than cherry at any given time. Body hygiene is a province of women. Kissing dead lips and a mouth with an offensive stench is romance killer. No arguing with this.

Besides, they must be ready to contend with the loneliness awaiting them as they grow older and find it harder to find a man. There is nothing cool about a woman smoking.

I rest my case.

@nyanchwani

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