In the battle to stop smoking, both on a personal level and a societal level, we must consider various factors. One of those factors is the appearance of public figures smoking. Does seeing public figures smoking encourage smoking behavior? To be specific, does the sight of smoking models, and by models we mean the men and women fashion models who grace magazine covers and ad copy, increase smoking? If a person sees models smoking do they then feel encouraged or at least less discouraged from smoking?

Is Smoking Amongst Models Very common?

No one is exactly sure how many models smoke, but there are many stories about women models smoking in order to stay thin. The typical model smoking would be in order to add nicotine to the body to keep themselves from gaining or retaining weight. Of course, we very seldom get to really know what goes on in a model’s private life, this besides the desperate attempts by the tabloid rags to give us every detail of a model’s private life. We do not really know which model is a smoking model and which have the sense to not smoke. Still, even if models do not smoke in their private life, they may be posed in the act of smoking as part of their job. Some cigar magazines, for example, will have a cigar smoking model on their cover or inside pages. Some of those cigar magazines even have female cigar smoking models on their cover of inside pages as part of articles or advertisements.

What About Children? Are Their Attitudes Effected?

When children and others see smoking models, does it encourage smoking? Children do imitate what they see. If a child sees someone they look up to or admire do something then they naturall feel that behavior is okay. So if they see smoking models and they admire models, then they very likely will think smoking is okay. If shown many glamorous smoking models the behavior is even more ingrained and encouraged. This is especially true of smoking teen models because children can more relate to teens. It may be reaching to claim that the formula victoria's secret models + smoking cigarettes = children smoking is accurate, but we do have to seriously consider the potential influence of fashion models smoking on children. We must do this because the effects of smoking on children can be extremely harmful, therefore we should be concerned about the effect of smoking models.