Think+Thin



City and Islington College in London, England, has an annual poster design competition for the National Health Service's smoking cessation campaign. The entries were so great during the 2012 competition that the school selected three winners! This image, drawn by Karla Farren, is by far my favorite of the three, and it tells quite a story with only four simple words: "Smoking makes you thinner." The poster begs the question, do we think thin? Let's explore the topic of thinness as it relates to society and thinking patterns. This poster is now sprinkled across the UK as part of the NHS's stop smoking campaign, and it's asking people to consider a few things: do we need to smoke to fit in? does smoking really make us skinny? do we think about consequences of our actions? The answer to each of these questions is 'no', but let's talk about each of them a little further. Society is so intensely wrapped in the throes of social media, television and 'what's cool'. People see movie stars smoking drugs and cigarettes in films, they see models lounging by a pool, holding a cigar on their Intstagram pages, and they see musicians having a drink and a smoke in bars with their buddies and fans. There are also cliques of people at school and at work who hang out and smoke, and you can't hang with them unless you're a smoker, too. They're all popular and successful, and they make smoking look like so much fun. We tell ourselves, 'we should all try it; we'll all be cool and fit in. Smoking makes you thinner...if you stop eating. Being thin is a sign of physical attractiveness, or at least that's what mainstream media tells us. What better way to get skinny than to smoke? It's been proven that smoking is an appetite suppressant, however, smoking isn't going to make you any thinner unless it's coupled with a reduced, balanced diet and some physical exercise. In fact, there are plenty of quite large smokers whom I know personally, and some who are more notable, like Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The image is a hateful reminder of what smoking can do to our bodies; it's showing us that beautiful human beings (of any size) can be reduced to a pile of calcium phosphate and collagen by simply inhaling the carcinogens we're addicted to. What it can't show you is how painful and agonizing a death caused from smoking can be, but we can infer that it's not a pleasant way to go from the ominous colors and the skeleton's grimace in the poster. We make hundreds and thousands of decisions in a day, but we don't calculate or anticipate all of the results of those decisions at the time they are being made. This poster is directly correlating to the dilemma of decision-making. When hooked on nicotine, we can only think about getting the next dose, and we usually have a limited window of time to get it (like on a break, or on our way to class); if we miss our window of opportunity, we could possibly have to go hours without the nicotine, which can greatly affect cognitive function. This could lead to decreased productivity and sometimes emotional instability. Do we consider this when having the first few smokes that lead to such dependency (do we know the slippery slope)? Do we consider how enslaved we'll be to this addiction? No. We only consider what is fun in the moment, or what looks cool, or what we think is the best way to fit in. We think too thinly. We don't think deep enough. We allow ourselves to be influenced by others too often, even though we know what's best for ourselves. This image is showing us that we have the power to say no, that we have the power to change our lives. It's painting a dark, dismal representation of the cycle of nicotine addiction. It shows the end of the game, and we're not the winners. If we are to be smokers, it's only a matter of time before only our ashes remain.
 * Think Thin? **

Works Cited
Farren, Karla. "Smoking Makes You Thinner". 2012. //Smoke Free Islington,// 21 January 2016. @http://www.smokefreeislington.nhs.uk/city-islington-college-poster-competition/.