What is the smoking fetish? Simply put, it's when someone is sexually aroused by another person's smoking.
Most often it's a male excited by a woman's smoking, although some gay males and lesbians also have smoking fetishes. Smoke Signals Online focuses on women smoking, though, so we'll use heterosexual examples for the purposes of this discussion.
There are two main ways that people get satisfaction from watching others smoke; some need the in-person stimulation of a partner who smokes. Many others, though, are satisfied by looking at smoking photos, or watching smoking videos.
That's why sites like ours provide an important sexual outlet for many folks.
It's believed that the smoking fetish has existed for more than a century, as erotic photos of women smoking have survived from the early part of the 20th century.
There are also a few brief references to the fetish in psychological research on fetishism, done in the 1980s. Small groups of smoking fetishists began finding each other through magazine ads or internet chat rooms in the late 1980s and early 90s.
However, it was primarily an underground phenomenon. The smoking fetish (also known as capnolagnia) really entered the public consciousness in the mid-90s, when an excerpt from Smoke Signals Magazine was published in Harper's Magazine.
That excerpt was seen by editors from Playboy and the Wall Street Journal, each of which published articles about Smoke Signals and the smoking fetish; a mini-media frenzy ensued.
Thousands of people who thought "they were the only one" with this unusual sexual interest learned that they were far from alone. With the concurrent emergence of the internet, the smoking fetish had arrived - and had a new home.
Subscriptions to Smoke Signals magazine flooded in. Several companies who had been filming women smoking, found they had a new and large audience for their work, which they began selling online. Others picked up their video cameras and began filming.
And web traffic to Smoke Signals soared. That led us to launch the membership site Smoke Signals Online, in 1999. And we're still going strong.
Why does someone develop a smoking fetish? That's a question that's truly impossible to answer. In general, people develop fetishes at an early age and people with capnolagnia are no exception. It's believed that early childhood experiences are usually what lead to the development of a fetish, but any "evidence" is really just anecdotal.
Most smoking fetishists will tell you that their fetish started when they were "young," but in all the surveys we've done (and we've done many), we've found it impossible to, for example, say that a mother's smoking led to her child's smoking fetish.
After talking to thousands of people with smoking fetishes, we believe the best answer to the question of "why" - is similar to the answer of why someone is gay. They can't explain why they're gay. They just are.
It's the same with someone who has a smoking fetish. He can't tell you why. He just happens to love watching women smoke.
There are three common explanations that smoking fetishists usually give, when asked what they find appealing about a woman's smoking: an aura of sophistication and self-confidence; a taboo appeal (particularly when it comes to younger smokers); or the willingness to accept or even welcome the dangerous consequences of smoking (often referred to as "the dark side" by smoking fetishists).
There are also many "sub-fetishes" within the smoking fetish. Some involve what's being smoked: specific brands, colors or lengths of cigarettes, cigars or even pipes. Others involve the way a woman smokes: techniques like nostril exhales, smoke rings, french inhales or dangles. And some involve the type of smoker: age (from teens to older women), race or ethnicity, and so on.
More than half of smoking fetishists we've surveyed say they prefer to watch fully-clothed women smoke; however, a sizeable minority prefers to see women smoking while naked, while masturbating or while having sex. Lesbian smoking scenes are also quite popular.
Many armchair psychologists claim that the smoking fetish is really just a form of oral fixation, with the cigarette (or cigar) as the phallic object. Most smoking fetishists, however, disagree. Either way, smoking oral sex is one of the most popular type of hardcore smoking imagery.
With nearly 20 years of experience in the smoking fetish world, and run by lifelong smoking fetishists - Smoke Signals Online is the membership site created by smoking fans - FOR smoking fans. We hope you'll join our community.
