and Wetherell, 1995) of how a creditable 'self' is developed (Potter and Wetherell, 1987, 1995; Hall,. 1997; Scott et al., 1998) by non-smoking adoles-.
HEALTH EDUCATION RESEARCH Theory & Practice
Vol.17 no.2 2002 Pages 167–179
Performing coolness: smoking refusal and adolescent identities
E. W. Plumridge, L. J. Fitzgerald and G. M. Abel Abstract
Introduction
The implications of smoking refusal for personal identity style were studied through conversations in six small focus groups or dyads of 13- and 14-year-old non-smokers from an urban New Zealand secondary school. The approach to analyzing their talk was informed by notions of ‘performativity’ and ‘social space’ to focus on the connections between identity and social relations. Smoking emerged as a key signifier of power and status. It was salient at both top and bottom ends of the social hierarchy depending upon the competence displayed in smoking as part of a larger ensemble of personal deportment and behavior. Being a non-smoker therefore inevitably carried connotations of being ‘average’ or ‘in the middle’, presenting non-smoking adolescents with the problem of accrediting themselves against superior ‘smoker cool’ groups. A discourse analytic approach was used to examine the resources and strategies participants brought to bear on this ‘problem’, which was then seen to be solved differently by boys and girls. Boys could establish alternatives to ‘smoker cool’ through physical activity, girls had little recourse but to accept their inferior status. The implications of this for health education and promotion are discussed
Cigarette smoking remains a major global health problem (Ministry of Health, 1998a–d; WHO, 2001), with little sign of any success in eradication (Biener, 1975; Rooney, 1984; Ministry of Health, 1998b). In some western countries smoking did for a time appear to be decreasing among young people and in New Zealand, for example, a review spoke of a ‘somewhat encouraging’ decline in smoking by 1993 (McGee et al., 1995). However, smoking increased dramatically among young adolescents in New Zealand during the 1990s, with a nearly 40% increase in daily smoking among 14–15 year olds between 1992 and 1999 (Laugesen and Scragg, 1999). It seems that smoking uptake increased across all classes as, despite the overall socio-economic gradient in smoking prevalence in New Zealand (Whitlock et al., 1997; Borman et al., 1999), this increase among young adolescents was unrelated to school decile (the summary measure for ranking the socio-economic composition of schools in New Zealand). However, there have been gender differences and smoking is now higher among adolescent girls than adolescent boys (Laugesen and Scragg, 1999). Such trends are not unique. The decline in adolescent smoking in Australia is said to have ‘stopped’ (Hill et al., 1999) and the higher prevalence of smoking among girls than boys is characteristic of developed western countries (Oakley et al., 1992). Health education appears to be losing the battle to prevent smoking among the young. In New Zealand the increase in smoking is despite widespread knowledge of adverse health effects (Laugesen and Scragg, 1999) and despite considerable
Department of Public Health and General Practice, Christchurch School of Medicine, PO Box 4345, Christchurch, New Zealand
© Oxford University Press 2002. All rights reserved
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E. W. Plumridge et al. state funded anti-smoking initiatives (Blewden and Spinola, 1999). Yet ‘education’ broadly conceived, must remain a key, for while as West and Michell concluded, we cannot ‘completely’ rule out genetic, biological and personality factors as explanations for smoking, ‘any child or adolescent can become a smoker’ (West and Michell, 1997). Social factors and some sort of learning remain pivotal. The recognition that ‘learning’ is based on more than information alone (Mellanby et al., 1992; WHO, 1999; Mitchell and Smith, 2000) has led to interest in learning through peers or ‘peer influence’ (van Roosmalen and McDaniel, 1989; Fergusson et al., 1995; Bauman and Ennett, 1996; Hazard and Lee, 1999). Recent research has highlighted the importance of the social meanings of smoking in this context. While gender differences in motives for smoking have been suggested (Clayton, 1991; Nichtar et al., 1997), gender and social status appear to interact (Clayton, 1991; Michell and West, 1996; Michell, 1997a,b; Michell and Amos, 1997; Nichtar et al., 1997). Scottish studies reveal smoking was most common among ‘top’ girls, ‘who projected an image of high self-esteem’, were ‘good looking’, ‘dead popular’ and ‘cool’, and for whom smoking was associated with admired social style. Only a minority of smoker girls had poor social skills, low self-esteem and were coerced into smoking. ‘Top’ boys were less ‘vulnerable’ to smoking because their wish to be ‘cool’ conflicted with their wish to be ‘fit’ and they had other interests—‘sport, computers, music’ (Michell and Amos, 1997). Smoker boys were mainly ‘troublemakers’, who were feared rather than admired (Michell, 1997a). As Michell argues, ‘it is apparent that different groups of pupils smoke for different reasons which are related to pecking order and group membership’ (Michell, 1997a). In the effort to incorporate this wider social context and ‘the role of non-friends’ (West and Michell, 1997), Michell and West have invoked notions of ‘identity modeling’ (Michell and West, 1996). Others have drawn on theories of consumption to explore how magazines reinforce ‘self and aspirational images’ of young people (Amos et al., 1997, 1998), justify smoking and influence young
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people to ‘pick up trends from more innovatory peers’ (Gray et al., 1997). Such approaches emphasize the positive attractions of smoking, perhaps in reaction to the overly simplistic concept of ‘peer pressure’ as coercion through bullying, teasing, exclusion and the like (Michell and West, 1996). Researchers have argued that the role of such coercive peer pressure ‘is relatively slight’ and more important is ‘identifying what is attractive...in the portrayal of smoking’ and countering that appeal (West, 1997). However, emphasis on the positive attraction of smoking uptake for identity style should not obscure the equally salient issues for identity style of smoking refusal. Perhaps because not smoking is the apparently rational response to health risks, the implications of social meaning and personal identity in smoking refusal have been less attended to. The known inverse correlation, for instance between sport and smoking for boys (Rooney, 1984; Blair et al., 1985; Winnail et al., 1995), and the preference of some boys for ‘sport, computers, music’ (Michell and Amos, 1997) has been seen to demand little further enquiry. Michell and Amos argue that for ‘middle’ as opposed to ‘top’ girls, smoking ‘was not an issue’ (Michell and Amos, 1997) and that adolescents in the ‘middle’ are ‘not pressured to smoke’ (Michell, 1997a). Smoking for such ‘safe’ adolescents is of ‘no interest and for those who do smoke its main salience is to do with identity and style’ (Michell, 1997a). This paper argues rather that smoking uptake and smoking refusal are both important identity statements; moreover statements made and maintained in an adolescent world that is profoundly and inescapably hierarchical, and where smoking is signifier of status that has to be either embraced or rejected, but cannot be ignored.
Methodological approach To tie issues of identity to the larger social context we have drawn on approaches deriving from ‘performativity’ (Butler, 1990; Lloyd, 1999) and ‘social space’. While it has been recognized that adolescents ‘fashion’ identities during schooling years
Performing coolness (Kinney, 1993; Martino, 1999) and can utilize smoking to negotiate ‘uncertain’ identities (Denscombe, 2001), the notions of performativity and ‘social space’ direct attention to how in a profound sense, such fashioning and negotiation are not optional. Identity is in the enactment of such negotiation or fashioning. Everyone is instantiated as a particular identity through the way they comport themselves. Butler’s argument is that identity consists in this ‘doing’. Identity is not something we ‘acquire’, but something we ‘do’; ‘not an...expression of what one is, but...something that one does: ‘the stylized repetition of acts through time’’. Her emphasis is thus not on ‘authentic substantive identities’, but on ‘social space: the symbolic realm in which subjects interpellate and hail other subjects’ (Butler, 1990; Lloyd, 1999). Such presentation of self is inescapable for everyone, and the accoutrements used, the products consumed and the competence in behaviors displayed are the basis of claims and ascriptions of identity. Individuals are not free to ‘fashion’ identity as they choose, but have to do so under conditions of others’ readings of their competence. Each has to make a claim to some identity, but lacks the power to ensure the claim. Pejorative readings are always possible; identity politics are therefore also politics of power relations. We argue that in this context, smoking is an unavoidable issue, because whether adopted or refused, smoking carries profound status implications. Enmeshed in a power hierarchy of identity styles, each pupil has the ‘problem’ of securing a creditable position in the pecking order. We explore this ‘problem’ through a discursive analysis (Potter and Wetherell, 1995) of how a creditable ‘self’ is developed (Potter and Wetherell, 1987, 1995; Hall, 1997; Scott et al., 1998) by non-smoking adolescents staking a claim as ‘average’ or ‘in the middle’. Then we consider how justification is made for ‘average’ as creditable, given the imputation of average as also ‘less than’ some (although ‘more than’ others). Data comes from the first wave of a 3-year study of 42 boys and girls at an urban secondary school in New Zealand. When the study began in
August 1999 pupils were 14 or 15 years old and were in Year 10, the second year of secondary schooling, which is also known as the Fourth Form. The school was a co-educational, state school with a decile 8 ranking. As decile 10 is the top ranking, the school was of relatively high socio-economic catchment. As purposeful selection was refused as part of ethical consent for the study, participants were randomly selected from all year 10 pupils (n ⫽ 278). Parental consent was also required by the school authorities and logistics were therefore protracted as telephone follow-up was needed to ensure written responses were received. As in pilot work, pupils asserted peers would be enthusiastic for studies where initial contact was in groups of peers (Daley, 1998), it was decided to encourage recruitment by beginning the first wave of qualitative data through focus groups when about half the needed number of participants had been recruited. Focus groups were constrained by class times and participants therefore tended to come from the same class or, since classes in Year 10 are selected on academic ability, from classes of similar academic ability. The six groups were small by some definitions. Two groups contained four males, and two contained three or four females. Kitizinger (Kitizinger, 1995) recommends that the ideal focus group size is between four and eight people; however, we noted Michell and West’s suggestion that small groups, perhaps of three are ‘ideal’ for research of young people and smoking (Michell and West, 1996). Two of our groups were dyads (two girls in one and a boy and girl in the other) due to the well-recognized phenomenon of nonappearance of participants (Michell, 1997b; Bloor et al., 2001). Dyad conversations were no less useful than those of groups since the same substantive issues and same consensus processes were seen in all. Groups were led by two experienced female moderators, all interviews were recorded, transcribed and managed using Ethnograph. The theme list focused on participants’ understandings of the social hierarchy of the school, their use of school recreation times and their own friendship networks. Without prompting from moderators, discussions
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E. W. Plumridge et al. centered on the social hierarchy within their school year and the ‘problems’ of their own position within that hierarchy. Participants described themselves as non-smokers (Michell, 1997a), but all talked at length of the importance of smoking as a marker of individual identity and of social hierarchy and of their personal politics of ‘refusing’ smoking. Pseudonyms have been used in reporting this data and analysis was carried out by the three authors.
Social hierarchy and smoking There was consensus among study participants of the link between smoking and social status: IntL
Are there lots of groups...in the school in the Fourth Form? All Yeah. Cheryl You get different, you know, you get people that are high up and then people that are low down and yeah people in the middle. IntV What does high up mean? Cheryl Popular. Suzanne Yeah, go in the top field and have a smoke. [All laugh] [Group 5] Lynn
Vivien Lynn [Group 6] Gavin
No. The popular ones kind of hang around all the tennis courts and smoke and stuff. They’re just outside A and B block. Yeah. On a sort of fashionable, cool basis, out of 10, you’ve got people who um, well, then you’ve got people like in our class who are like a one, or one and a half.... And then there are the smokers and the, um and you know are like ten.
[Group 4] Smoking was not, however, a simple or straightforward basis for status claims and ascription as it could carry both high and low status. This depended very much upon the competence displayed by the individual not just in regard to smoking, but in
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regard to a larger ensemble of behaviors. Groups explicate the subtle ways of being ‘cool’, making clear how smoking was only one element in the ensemble: IntL
Would you be able to describe for us the different sorts of groups [...] in the fourth form? Bronwyn There’s like the cool group, the, you know, you have to like either you have to be a certain person. Joan You have to lower your kilt till it touches the ground and you have to wear really baggy tops like hoodies [jackets with hoods attached] and stuff. Bronwyn And your shoes undone. Joan To like about here. IntL If you’re a girl? Joan Yeah. And you have to have your hair like [...] like up, piled up exactly where it should be and you have to smoke at lunchtime. You have to smoke at lunchtime to be in this group. [Group 7] That ‘coolness’ was not guaranteed by smoking is evidenced in the consensus that some smokers were contemptible rather than cool. Unless smokers could demonstrate the whole range of competence, they might as Vivien and Lynn argued, become identified merely as ‘low-lifes’, ‘not so clean looking and stuff’ and ‘yeah, they look all tatty and torn. They don’t look like they respect themselves even. They don’t have enough pride to make themselves look respectable’ [Group 6]. The major risk in smoking however, was the dreaded one of being a ‘try-hard’. A ‘try-hard’ was a nerd or other aspirant from the bottom of the social structure, lacking the competence to make a claim to higher identity style except through smoking as an instrumental activity, not backed up with ‘real’ social and personal competence: IntV
And what sorts of things do people do to keep in the popular group? Like when you say, sort of try-hards, ...um yeah when you said they’re try-hards, what sort of things do they do to try?
Performing coolness All Smoke. IntV Yeah? All Smoke. [Group 5] IntV
Joan
And the people who’re trying to get into the cool group, can they do anything to do that or [...] do they start wearing the same clothes or... Well if you want to be cool basically you just, you just smoke.
[Group 7] IntV
Lauren IntV Lauren
So can you, can you think of people who are trying to get into the popular group, like not, I don’t necessarily want names, but you can sort of see when people are trying to get in, can you? Yeah, definitely. What do they do, just..? Well, they bring smokes to school and they don’t even know how to smoke them.
[Group 3] IntV Gary Phil IntV Phil
Joan So he’s a nerd but he smokes and, and why do you think he smokes? ‘Cos he doesn’t want to look like a nerd. Yeah. But he can’t escape being a nerd. And he buys friendship. Like he goes out there and he gives people smokes [...]
[Group 2] Gavin
IntL Gavin
[Group 4]
In a world where smoking had such complexity of social meaning, and was so fraught as a statement of style and identity, self-assertion as a non-smoker carried almost immediate implications of location in status between the extremes. This was the case despite the existence of a small ‘super-cool’ group of non-smokers in the school. They were universally admired but were beyond emulation by the children in this study. The ‘super-cool’ pupils were set apart firstly by ethnicity. Vivien claimed ‘the Black people are more popular.... Most of the Black people in our school are like real popular’ by which she meant Maori and Samoans [Group 6]. Secondly, they had spectacular competence skills as break-dance experts and musicians. This gave them such status that they could break all the rules and fraternize across ranks without impugning their superiority. So Joan and Bronwyn described the leader of this group as ‘our peacekeeper’ who could move with impunity across all ranks and ‘can be friends with anybody’. He was idolized:
Classic thing the other day, there, there was this guy....he was sort of these sort of computer nerd types, and he suddenly changed and he suddenly started to you know, do all the cool things, low ride, do your hair, stupid stuff, you know that sort of stuff. Low-ride? Yeah, yeah all that stupid stuff, and then suddenly he started smoking, well Andrew and me looked at each other, because you can tell, and it’s just amazing how people change....
Yeah. And he’s, he’s [...] he’s very popular and he doesn’t smoke so he, everybody looks up to him and he... Bronwyn Idol. Joan Yeah he’s an idol and he gives, and not only is he cool, he’s cool in his own way. He does all his schoolwork so everybody looks up to him even more. They’re going how can you, how can you have this image and still do all your work and Jacob, Jacob can do it because he’s Jacob. Don’t ask. We don’t know. [Group 7] Boys were as keenly aware of how this group could break through the social order at will: Gavin
IntL Gavin
The, the great thing about them is that they’re not, I know a lot of people, well I think this is really, really awful, some people don’t talk to other people because it damages their reputation... Yeah, yeah, right. Like, like ‘I don’t want to talk to her because, you know, she makes me look,
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E. W. Plumridge et al. look down’, sort of thing... And I think that a lot of people like, like these guys...are, are, like they talk to me. Like I’m not really their friends but they talk to me and they’re not ashamed to do that... IntL And they don’t smoke and that? Andrew Don’t think so. Todd No. They don’t smoke. [Group 4] That this group existed as a model of non-smoker cool, but was not a model that could be emulated is evident from the way these boys continued their conversation. Those like Jacob had ‘no shame’ as Andrew argued. Jacob ‘can just talk to anyone or do anything he likes’. But participants in this study put themselves in a different class as they agreed ‘whereas if I did that well it’s just going to look freak, you know [Laugh]. ‘Why would you do that’, sort of thing, you know’ [Group 4]. For the non-smokers in this study, the relevant social hierarchy remained that where the extremes were dominated by the use of smoking and the refusal of smoking interpolated them in the middle. All were agreed on this: Lynn
Vivien IntL Lynn IntL Vivien [Group 6] Lynn
IntL Vivien Lynn Vivien [Group 6]
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Something like us. Average. Like I mean, not Nerds, and we’re not no-hopers, and we don’t smoke and stuff. But we’re not like real cool. Yeah, we’re just kind of in-between. Yeah? Yeah, we’re just the average people. Right. Kind of a bit of everything. It’s like basically, it’s like the people that sit down and talk, and then there’s the smokers and there’s the sports people... How would you describe yourselves, in that? Kind of in between. Yeah. But not the smokers, but like in between.
IntL
Yeah. What people, do you have a word to describe yourself? Would you have a word that would describe your group of friends? Caroline Um, pathetic. [All laugh] IntL That’s not very polite. [Laugh] Caroline No. Suzanne I don’t know, they’re just like a normal kind. [Laugh] Cheryl No I just sort of whatever. Somewhere along the middle. IntV Ah-ha. Karen Yeah, the same with me. IntL Right. IntV So none of you are in the popular group? All No. [Group 5] IntL Andrew IntL Gavin
How, how would you describe yourself? I don’t know. Got a name for yourself? On a sort of fashionable, cool basis, out of 10, ... IntL Yeah. Gavin We’d obviously probably be a 4 or a 5. [All laugh] IntL Oh okay. [All laugh] That’s quite honest. [Laugh] Andrew I mean that... Gavin A 4, well maybe a 6, but then you’ve got people who um, well, then you’ve got people like in our class who are like a 1, 112. IntL So you’re not doing too badly. [Laugh] Gavin And then there are the smokers and the, um and you know are like 10. [Group 4] IntV
So where were we, you know you said you had the popular groups and the [...] nerdy ones and the middle ones, where, where are you in that? Middle. Okay. Definitely.
Lauren IntV Lauren [Group 3] Being average had its own problems.
Performing coolness
Gendered ‘solutions’ to the ‘problem’ of being a non-smoker As non-smokers and so necessarily located as ‘average’ or ‘in the middle’, distinctions had to be drawn against the social extremes as a way of defining self. However, complicity with a power structure that had strong negative sanctions for lowly status meant each had the problem of not only distinguishing a self, but of accrediting it as worthy of some honor. Distinguishing and distancing self from nerds or ‘try-hards’ was one relatively straightforward way of establishing such credential but the ‘problem’ was much more difficult in contrast to the higher social orders. That brought them into contrast with smoking as a statement of prestigious ‘cool’ style. Smoking was thus an inescapable issue, since refusal of smoking was a refusal of the (admittedly risky) imprimatur of prestige. How then were non-smoker boys and girls to accredit themselves as worthy, without adopting and making their own, that key social signifier? Boys and girls ‘solved’ this problem differently. Boys were able to not only deconstruct smoking as a sign of prestige, they were able to build on notions of physicality to develop alternative, and arguably as creditable, self-identities. Girls were denied this. While they did develop critiques of ‘smoker cool’ style, they struggled to repudiate its glamour, and remained otherwise committed to the ensemble of ‘smoker cool’ dress and deportment. As noted in other studies (Messner, 2000), boys in this study had much greater rights to physical movement and to space than girls. Both boys and girls confirmed this. This related not just to formal sports, but to the ability to be active in a broad sense. This was taken up and monopolized by boys, and surrendered by girls. Activity was linked to social status in the capacity for ‘hassling’ those lower in the pecking order. So John put rights to movement and rights to hassle together, and declared that his lunch hours were spent ‘Okay, it’s either playing sport out on the field or like walking round and just hassling people. [All laugh]... That’s all we do really... And occasionally we do something else, but there’s hardly...we
sometimes sit down somewhere but we’re always walking around. We can never stay still’ [Group 3]. Other boys confirmed this physicality and activity: IntL Adam IntL Adam IntL Todd
Adam, what do you do at lunchtime? With your friends? Yeah, ah we usually have a game of hackie, [Indistinct] or something. Ah-ha. And that’s what we most often do... And Todd, what do you get up to at lunchtimes? Oh, a whole heap of stuff. Um, depends like, ah sport, lots of sport, soccer, rugby and, yeah maybe bullrush or something, stuff like that.
[Group 4] Developing a self-identity as physical beings, these boys could not only mount a strong critique of smokers as admirable, but also assert themselves as equally if not more admirable. Physicality could be set against smoking. The boys not only took issue with smoking as a signifier as cool, but argued that as physical beings they rendered themselves as of sufficient account to secure if not admiration from the smoker cool groupings, at least an immunity from hassling. This can be seen in the talk of Group 3 boys. At points in conversation they acknowledged inferiority to smokers. IntL
So, are, are there some groups that won’t talk to you? Andrew Suppose. Gavin I mean, there are, yeah there are some like, like... Andrew Yeah, probably like the smokers. Gavin Yeah... [Group 4] However, they were able to deploy self-identities as physical sporty beings to substantiate and back the critique of smoker cool, and assert a basis for socializing immune to ‘smoker cool’ penetration: Todd
You don’t have to be cool if you smoke. I mean, if, you can be cool in many different ways...
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IntL
Adam Todd
IntL All Todd
Gavin Todd
Cool, cool means different things to different people, like cool to me means being a nice person, you know, you know being, you know being supportive of each other. If you’ve got a problem, yeah go and talk to them about it, sort of thing. That’s what being cool, to me being cool isn’t going out and smoking and wearing best clothes and all that sort of stuff. Right. How do the smoker groups treat you guys? Because you don’t smoke, you don’t hang out with them? They don’t treat us at all, really. They’re usually out smoking. Yeah, I’ve talked to some of them and they’re like, they, they don’t hassle me at all. No? They don’t hassle any of you guys? No... Like you, I had a couple of mates that you know, like um, he was in my class the first year and then went off in the Second Year and he started smoking, we don’t really do anything now... Cause you feel insecure around them, hey? Well, yeah, it’s kind of, I’m not too sure what it is but yeah. Yeah, I’m not too sure. And I’ve got, I’ve got friends that I’ve had for ages that I, you know I can just go to them and just really sort of like play sport, such as soccer or rugby out on the field, and, yeah that’s basically what I do. I just have got friends who I, yeah, just talk to heaps, you know, socialize with.
[Group 4] Todd hastily repudiates the potential implication of inferiority around smoker cool (‘you feel insecure around them hey?’) by reference back to his immunity and resources as a sporty type. Group 2 boys achieve the same ends in their use of physicality to repudiate smoker cool as ‘boring’: Paul
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Well they think they’re cool but they really aren’t.
IntL Paul
Phil IntL Phil
IntL Gary Phil IntL Phil
IntL Paul Phil [Group 2]
So what do you think about them? Well I wouldn’t really want to [...] they’re boring so I still go and see them now and then but I wouldn’t go out there every day. It’s real boring. They just sit down smoking... ...The smoking’s bad. I hate smokers. Do any of you smoke? No. I’m a sports person. I’m a sportsman myself. Outdoors person. Can you tell by the rippling muscles. Rippling biceps. You wouldn’t be saying that if there’s a video camera as well, Phil (Laugh) Thanks Gary.... Have they [smoker cool groups] ever picked on you guys? No, I’m friends with them as well so. They just joke around like us because we like joke ourselves so they just go oh hahaha but if its someone that they hate its not... So what do you do when they do that to someone. There’s nothing much you can do really. You just sit there and watch.
In the claim to complicity with hassling lies the claim to equality: if they cannot like the ‘supercool’ non-smokers intercede, they are as ‘sporty’ non-smokers, admitted as spectators rather than as victim to the spectacle. Girls’ talk revealed the gendered nature of the rights to movement and physicality, confirming boys’ hegemony and girls’ exclusion from that domain. Karen IntL Karen IntL Karen IntV Karen
They’re always playing sport. Yeah? They’re always down on the tennis court playing basketball. Ah-ha. Yeah. That hackie sack thing. Oh yeah. So is that particular groups of boys or is that all boys spend more time? Most of them really.
Performing coolness IntV IntL IntV Cheryl [Group 5]
This depiction of girls as sitters and talkers was reiterated frequently. IntL Cheryl Caroline Suzanne
...take us through a typical lunchtime. Sit down or walk. You eat. Then there’s all the other activities at school. Caroline Go to canteen, sit down, eat your food and gossip. (all laugh) And that’s about it. What do you do at lunchtime, [Indistinct], what do you do at lunchtime? Cheryl Oh, sit in the classroom. IntL Sit in the classroom? Cheryl You always sit out there on the grass. Karen I don’t know. We just talk and stuff. IntL Yeah. Karen I get a tan. [All laugh] [Group 5] IntL Lynn Vivien IntL Vivien IntV IntL Vivien [Group 6] Lauren
running round cause the others are like [...] I don’t know. they’re like ‘I don’t want to get up’, and everything. [Laugh] Like they’re too posh or something. But yeah, just yeah, just sit down and everything.
So girls at lunchtime sit around talking, boys talk and... Sun-bathe. [Laugh] Talk some a bit and sun-bathe, and boys? Kick the ball around or stuff like that.
Ah. So, what do you do at lunchtime together? Just sit around and talk, yeah. We sometimes go for walks with just some people. Yeah. Is there a particular um place in the school that you like to sit? Just out, yeah, just by the river. Oh okay. And then when you go and wander, do you wander like round the school or...? Just to the canteen or something. [Laugh] Well, there’s a heap of us [...] lots, and um we just sit anywhere and just talk and laugh and whatever or some, or we used to like go out on the field and just run around doing stuff. There’s only like two or three of us involved in like
[Group 3] Sitting, talking and eating gave girls little room to develop an alternative, creditable self-identity that could withstand the ascendancy of ‘smoker cool’. And so when girls took issue with the smoking as a badge of cool as in Caroline’s argument that ‘if they have to smoke, then...let them have it. I mean they haven’t got a real life without smokes. They haven’t got much of a life then, have they?’ [Caroline, Group 5], they remained nevertheless otherwise committed to the glamour of the smoker cool ensemble. So the conversation of the group continued after Caroline’s statement to enlarge upon what was nevertheless desirable about the world of smoker cool girls: Suzanne Their hair looks pretty cool. [Laugh]) Cheryl Yeah [Indistinct] sort of look like [Indistinct] Caroline The style of clothes... Karen They’ve always got like the latest clothes, before anyone else does. Caroline Yeah, like they have their hair all done up real tight back there in a [Indistinct] with a bun, or something. Yeah. IntL Oh okay. Caroline And like, the latest labels, labels. [Group 5] Girls were not able to mount a deconstruction of smoker cool as much as a criticism of their own exclusion from the realm of smoker cool girls: Caroline They think they’re so cool and that they’re so popular, and we can’t do anything. IntL Can you describe the popular group a bit more for us? Caroline Take hours to do their hair and [Laugh] um, they just...
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Sort of tanning their legs. Yeah. And has to be... Every lunchtime. Got all the guy friends and they think they’re cool. Suzanne Quite up themselves as well, and stuff. Caroline And self-centered. [Group 5] Joan
But she’s not in our group because she’s too cool... Bronwyn It seems like she’s like telling us all this stuff so that she looks like she’s really cool. Joan Yeah. Bronwyn And we look like we’re like the down people, you know, we’re not like anything. It seems to be like that. [Group 7] Girls had little way of authoritatively repudiating smoking. If smoking had its dangers—as Lauren said, ‘they’ll think I’ll, I’ll be a ‘try hard’ or something’ [Group 3]—not smoking meant accepting diminished status. Even those girls most insistent in asserting that theirs was a ‘choice’ not to smoke found it hard to conjure with the consequences. Lacking an alternative for selfidentity, girls were forced to accept themselves as ‘lesser’ than the world of smoker cool. Bronwyn and Joan talked at length of their comparative status in the power hierarchy of their school year. They insisted that only smoking kept them from being on the upper rung of ‘cool’ and that this was a choice they had made: Joan
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I mean we’re not, we’re not really, you know, there’s like the [Indistinct] its like the nerds, then there’s like the seminerds and then there’s like the average people and then there’s like you know, the half cool and then, that’s kind of where we are, we’re kind of we don’t have to smoke to be cool. [Laugh] Then there’s the um really the really popular smoking groups and there’s like a like a [...] this little ladder that you can climb the rungs of and...
Bronwyn And we chose to stop. [Laugh] Joan And we chose to stop. We reached there and we stopped. And we [...] I mean [...] everybody we’re friends with every, well I am. We’re friends with everybody though... No, we don’t really want to be in the cool lot. We just um, just kind of [...] we don’t want to be [Indistinct] or anything but we’re kinda just above the average sort of. We, we [...] we’re, we do everything that you suppose to do if you’re cool except we don’t smoke and we don’t wear our uniform like [Indistinct] but we do, we just [...] we’re just kinda normal. But we do [Indistinct]. IntV Oh right OK. IntL So tell us about the average kids then. Bronwyn The average kids there’s usually like about three in a group or something like that... Joan Yeah and they kinda walk round all the little, little groups. [...] Yeah there’s [...] there’s a lot of groups....there’s a lot of groups that are um [...] yeah kind of the average slash nerds [Laugh] this is sounding so horrible. [Laugh] Bronwyn They tend to be in um higher classes as well. Like the real brainy class. Joan The brainy classes. Bronwyn Like we’re about third or something like that in the list. Joan We’re second equal. Yay! [Group 7] These girls were in a difficult position: on the one hand, they had to accept that they were not on the top rung of ‘cool’ and, on the other hand, that they were not on the upper rung of intellect. Yet status remained very important to them, as signaled in the discussion about being second equal ‘Yay!’ rather than third. Elsewhere there were hints at the flimsiness of ‘choice’ as a creditable basis for not smoking. Such ‘choice’ could not protect one from hassling as subordinate. Joan and Bronwyn spoke of how they had an opinion of the smoker cool groups, but this was not a perfect form of defense:
Performing coolness Bronwyn ... like we have an opinion of them but they have like a really big opinion of us. Its like ‘oh yeah, they’re such dicks’ or something like that. Joan Yeah. Bronwyn Its just something really, really you know, horrible. Yeah. Joan We have to, we have to have an opinion of them back to make ourselves feel better. We don’t like go and tell them but to each other we have to, we have to say my God, because I think we have to feel better about ourselves. [Group 7] Having an ‘opinion’ was not a protection and ultimately these young non-smoker girls, like the others in the study, had to accept that their nonsmoking made and kept them socially subordinate.
Discussion: conceptualizing the importance and problems of smoking refusal Drawing on the ideas of ‘performativity’ and ‘social space’ illuminates how all children face the ‘problem’ of establishing credentials for a self that can (indeed must) be interpolated in an adolescent status/power structure. It enables us to see how all are locked into either ‘performing coolness’ or accrediting self against this performance. Utilizing a discourse analytic approach enables consideration of the resources and the strategies young adolescents draw on to do this. While research has quite correctly emphasized the importance of smoking uptake by boys and girls, and the interactions between smoking, gender and status, this paper points to the importance of remaining aware of how smoking uptake cannot be dislocated from smoking refusal. The two are ineluctably connected. The appeals of identity style and the importance of mechanisms of consumption and identity modeling as determinants of smoking uptake are important, but this paper suggests that abstracted from the power structure of social relations among adolescents, the issue of smoking uptake/refusal cannot be fully comprehended.
There are clearly limitations to a study of one site such as this. It may well be that the issues change as the cohort matures—indeed that is almost certainly so. However, even if this is the case, it may well be important to understand the dynamics of a particular point in time. There may be key points in smoking uptake. Issues at one point may be quite different to those at other points. Health education needs full understanding of such temporality. The culture and power structure in the school in this study may be radically different from those elsewhere, although there are no ostensible reasons why this school should be atypical. Certainly the common picture of ‘smoker style’ that emerges in research from places as diverse as Scotland, England, North America, Australia and New Zealand (Clayton, 1991; Fergusson et al., 1995; Bauman and Ennett, 1996; Michell and West, 1996; Lloyd et al., 1997; Michell, 1997a,b; Michell and Amos, 1997; Lucas and Lloyd, 1999; Martino, 1999) suggests identity politics are similar. In detail, the power structures may be different, but the widespread existence of labels like ‘cool’ and ‘nerd’ suggests similarity that is perhaps predictable from the global media networks that impinge on adolescence. The well-known association among girls of smoking with both high and low status suggests status issues are similar among girls throughout many western societies. The contrast between boys and girls, and the well-documented correlation between sport and smoking refusal among boys points to the omnipresent importance of gender. These things will be better understood if the power structures that hold them together are better understood. This paper is a contribution in that direction. Such a holistic approach immediately presents a number of implications for health promotion or education. Firstly, it reinforces the importance of understanding and strategizing around the issues of both smoking refusal and smoking uptake. Secondly, comprehending personal characteristics not only in terms of individuals but in terms of social relations reveals how almost certainly none are ever totally ‘safe’ from the allure of smoking, but that comparative ‘safety’ is related to alternat-
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E. W. Plumridge et al. ive ways of achieving status. The success of ‘middle’ non-smoker boys in doing just this, but within the overall status and power structure, may be a hopeful pointer. It suggests that there are ways to make progress against the allure of smoking which do not demand a total reconstruction of the status order or the erasure of the inscription of smoking in social prestige. Any programme of health promotion mounted against global phenomena like the status order or the social meanings invested in smoking is almost certainly doomed. It is hard to envisage health promotion and education matching investments able to be made through markets and media in entrenching smoking with high status among the young. The key would seem rather to lie in giving children desirable alternatives and in this context the issue of gender presents as serious. It would not be sensible to argue that this study throws full light, in all societies and contexts, on the comparatively higher uptake of smoking among girls than among boys. Its findings do suggest, however, that girls are struggling with fewer social resources than boys to accredit themselves as worthy. To an extent that is disappointing at the beginning of the third millennium; it would appear that young women are locked into accoutrements and decoration, rather than any other bodily achievements, as the prime means for the presentation of self.
Acknowledgements The study was funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand. Thanks are due to school authorities and Vivien Daley for liaison work and acting as one of the moderators, and to all the pupils who participated in groups.
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