GUS (Gave Up Smoking) is a community support diary for Kossacks in the midst of quitting smoking. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are quitting or thinking of quitting, please -- join us! We kindly ask that politics be left out.
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Tonight is the long awaited premiere of the fifth season of Madmen! The show has been on hiatus for nearly a year and a half so for those of us who have been jonesing for Joan, dying for Don, or pining for Peggy, the wait is over. The big news, according to show creator Mathew Weiner, is that tonight's episode will not pick up where last season left off. We have a time lapse on our hands, but we won't know how many years have passed until we tune in. Some more themes that will be covered this season:
Weiner is somewhat more forthcoming about the themes this series will explore in the upcoming weeks. "Business and personal stories is what the show is made of but it also ends up being about the mood people are in and the mood I'm in and how it relates to that period. One of the themes that is very important is: when is everything going to get back to normal? That really is the issue of the day right now. There is a displaced feeling about the culture and technology and resources. It goes down to morality and religion. Everything seems to be in the process of moving and that is the sensation that seems to be overriding all the characters and stories this season.
It looks like the denizens of Madison Avenue will be thrust from the cultural aesthetics of the sixties with which we all have been familiar, and forced into confronting the rising counter-culture of the mid- to late sixties. We saw this last season when Joan began feeling a bit anachronistic and Peggy seemed to find her footing among the younger members of the firm. This is my favorite part of the show: watching how Joan and Peggy in their very
different approaches to the male dominated working world, learn to adapt and excel in ever-changing and unfavorable environments. Of the show's nine writers,
seven are female. They way in which women survive, struggle, and even thrive in
Madmen's world of rampant sexism is part of what is so magnetic about the show. We
have come a long way baby, but the fact that we find so many of today's struggles mirrored in the 60's world of
Madmen, shows just how far we have to go.
Which brings me to smoking. I don't think we've seen so many people smoke on a TV show since the actual sixties. Smoking is everywhere, framing every scene. Something I always wondered about was just what are those actors smoking? It is the 'aughts (as they say), you can't compel your actors to smoke and you can't smoke in any work environment. Turns out, those are herbal cigarettes. I am glad the article points out that they aren't all that better for you.
But back to our inner Peggys and our inner Joans (and lets face it, we all have a little Betty Draper in us as well) and smoking. These are the staggaring statistics from 2010:
Women who smoke often begin as teenagers — before high school graduation. And the younger a girl is when she starts, the more heavily she is likely to use tobacco as an adult. The most recent CDC surveys showed that 15% of 9th-grade girls had smoked at least one cigarette in the past 30 days. By 12th grade, it was more than 22%. As early as middle school, nearly 5% of girls had smoked one or more cigarettes in the past 30 days. It’s not just cigarettes, either; nearly 10% of 12th grade girls reported that they had smoked at least one cigar in the past month. And more than 26% of the senior girls had used some form of tobacco in the past month.
One of the things I have always admired about
Madmen is how it helps me understand what my mother and grandmothers grew up with and what they overcame to become the amazing women I knew them to be. I know now, at 35, that there are girls that I work with and girls that I am related to who look up to me and one of the best gifts I can give them is to
not smoke. To get women to a better place we need to model ways in which to deal with stress and social pressures, and we can help do that by putting out those filthy cigarettes.
And to get you all in the mood for Madmen:
I can't wait!
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Has your life been affected by smoking or smokers in your life?
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