[The image of smoking women in France].
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this work was to try to understand why the social image of the smoking woman remains positive and cannot be assimilated to that of the smoking man. We wanted to describe the typical status and function of smoking women in today's social imaginary in France.


METHODS
We identified and interpreted selected images in which female smoking is presented as an ideological corpus.


RESULTS
The cultural meaning of female and male smoking, as well as their pathological effects, are different and should not be apprehended symmetrically. The leading feministic culture deeply resists alarming discourses about the dangers of tobacco, considering them to have little importance. Female smoking is still encouraged and exalted for its emancipating power: tobacco liberates woman from an impracticable womanhood.


CONCLUSIONS
There is a need for a political approach to female smoking, viewing it as a modern form of mutilation meant to compensate for the extension of women's rights. In order to fight against this imagery efficiently, it must be put into a critical perspective, eliminating taboos about certain feministic misunderstandings and dead-ends. A woman must be offered something more than smoking cessation: an improvement in her own being, a way to reappropriate her gendered identity.
Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Strasbourg, 47, avenue de la Forêt-Noire, 67082 Strasbourg Cedex.
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Sledziewski
D005260:Female; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D012907:Smoking / Q000523:psychology*; D012933:Social Identification; D012938:Social Perception