Smoking is Just as Bad as Fast Food

Social norms are, and always will be, evolving to fit what the society and that culture wants at that time. Smoking used to be one of the largest agriculture products in the United States at one time, and it has chronically declined with the invention of better healthcare techniques and the realization that smoking is actually bad for you. While flipping through one of my Mom’s old high school year books, I saw someone smoking on almost every single page and I questioned if smoking really was that big back then. She told me how every magazine had an advertisement in it and many tobacco brands advertised to young children. I thought about how I really have never truly seen an advertisement for smoking and came to the realization that it was because of my generation had put a bad rep on smoking which basically has almost wiped it out (compared to what it used to be). My mom then questioned how smoking was so common only 20-30, or even less years ago, and how it had came to being such a disgusting and socially unacceptable habit. I then again realized that there will never be a situation where a previous generation is not confused or shocked by a new set of social parameters introduced by the following generation.

            We put ourselves with our social norms so that we can basically defy our previous or parental generations and then when the time comes to rethink these social norms and to open up to new norms it is extremely difficult, no matter what the case. Although smoking may have gone downward when the generation just before me had questioned it, almost all of the generations before had questioned it. Now comes a time that I can directly relate a generation adjusting to a new social norm because the generation just above me is currently trying to readjust to the evolving social norm of eating healthier. For the past 20 years it has been the norm that it was okay to eat fast food in large quantities and to “pig out” on whatever we want. Now the social norms are shifting, just like how the norms of smoking had too around 20 years ago. My generation is now in the position that the generation just above me was with smoking; we are trying to change the social norms of eating extremely unhealthy not necessarily for our own benefit, but to actually defy the generations above us who have been eating extremely unhealthy foods. All in all I believe that our social norms are every changing and each generation seems to want to "one up" the previous.

I thought this was a good depiction of how a social norm has changed. This 100 lady is shown lighting her cigarette up, which would have been the social norm when she was younger. However in the past 20 years it has changed to which it is looked down upon if you smoke.


-Tommy Harvey

I will be turning in a Castelli Coupon tomorrow before class, again I apologize for my blogs being so late. I followed the rubrics and the stuff you wrote out for me when I have came in early directly as you have put it so I can achieve all if not as many of the points as possible.