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Smoking as a Weight‐Control Strategy among Adolescent Girls and Young Women: A Reconsideration
Author(s) -
NICHTER MIMI
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
medical anthropology quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.855
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1548-1387
pISSN - 0745-5194
DOI - 10.1525/maq.2004.18.3.305
Subject(s) - weight control , psychology , developmental psychology , body weight , smoking prevention , gerontology , demography , medicine , public health , obesity , sociology , nursing
Many studies have reported that adolescent girls and young women smoke to control their weight. The majority of these studies are cross‐sectional and report on correlational data from quantitative surveys. This article presents data from ethnographic interviews with 60 smokers, interviewed in high school and in follow‐up interviews at age 21. Contrary to previous research, this study found little evidence for the sustained use of smoking as a weight‐control strategy. In high school, smokers were no more likely than nonsmokers to be trying to lose weight. In the follow‐up study, 85 percent of informants replied that they had never smoked as a way to control their weight. One‐half of informants at age 21 believed that smoking as a weight‐control strategy would be ineffective, while the other one‐half had no idea whether it would work or not. Researchers need to exert caution in propagating the idea that smoking is commonly used as a conscious and sustained weight‐control strategy among adolescent females and young women.