‘Two's up and poncing fags’: young women's smoking practices, reciprocity and friendship

Abstract

Over the past decade much has been written by journalists, policy makers, and academics, about young women's leisure time pursuits. A great deal of this interest has focused around a concern that teenage girls in the UK are taking up smoking in larger numbers than their male peers. This paper draws on findings from my small‐scale doctoral research into teenage girls' use of tobacco and alcohol in a town in southern England. I examine young women's use of cigarettes as an informal social currency, and as a way of thinking about such tobacco use beyond the deficit model of the young female smoker common to many drugs education interventions. In this paper I draw upon theoretical material from the social theories of exchange to explore how young women's reciprocal networks of cigarettes operate to underpin friendships and mobilise power within girls' social networks. I explore how smoking as a reciprocal gift‐giving practice supports and maintains friendship groups and particular gendered practices. My argument is that teen girls create and sustain bonds of friendship through their use and exchange of cigarettes. I want to suggest that within the girls' friendship groups, the flow of branded cigarettes as a resource highlights alliances, inter‐group rivalries, and provides space for the production and negotiation of teenage ‘cool’ femininities.

Keywords:

• smoking
• drugs education
• friendship
• girls
• peer pressure
• sociality

Notes

1. The term ‘grunger’ was used pejoratively to describe young people who listened to rock music and wore dark clothes, particularly hooded sweatshirts and baggy jeans.

2. ‘Rudie’ was a shortened version of rude boy or rude girl, and was used sometimes pejoratively to describe young people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds who listened to urban music and dressed in a Black British cultural style, including streetwear labels like Nike, Avirex and Fubu.

3. Year 11 is the last year of compulsory secondary education in England and Wales. Pupils would be aged between 15 and 16 years.

4. Townie was a term often used pejoratively and interchangeably with ‘rudie’. However, it tended to refer to white working‐class young people who were seen to adopt ‘Black’ cultural forms such as Hip Hop and Garage music, and wore tracksuits and gold jewellery. Townie was used often in a pejorative sense, although many young people within the subcultures rejected or only grudgingly accepted these labels.

5. Toke meaning a pull or drag on the cigarette.