Am I blowing this out of proportion?

so I'm talking about smoking and in that content I guess the subject line is a little corny but the first thing they teach u in J school is to always have a catchy line which will attract the attention of your readers. So. And as usual i digress.

Here I talk about smoking in general and women smokers in particular. I know the talk. Smoking causes cancer, it ages your skin, stains your teeth, women smokers have it worse blah blah blah. None of this bothers me too much because I know my limits and never smoke more than 2 cigs a day. What does get my goat however is the way people react when they see a girl smoking. Agreed, the average Indian woman does not smoke and so it must be a little out of the ordinary to see one smoking openly. The average Indian woman also does not have the privilege of going upto the local chai-kada and stand around smoking. I accept all of this. As much as I am a rebel-without-a-pause at heart, I'm also practical. I don't expect a patriarchal society to really accept a lot of things, especially those considered 'manly'.

What I hate is that I don't have the choice to do so when I want to. I smoke not because of some need that I have but because I like to. I work in a campus with 16,000 other people and I was the only girl smoking. I ignored the weird looks initially but today is Day 2 that I have quit smoking... Again, its not being able to if I want to rather than actually being able to that bugs me. What happens when I wake up on a lazy Sunday morn and feel like a smoke? I can't excuse myself like my bro does now to "just go up the road". There is no where to go. And I realise that it is not just just a smoking thing anymore but has become this whole emotional thing now.

Did a google search. 75% of men said they did not like a girl who smoked since it felt like inhaling stale smoke. None of them however talked about what their girlfriends said when they smoked. Not surprisingly, most of the opinions online (both men and women) were skewed against women smokers. How it is not 'done' and blah blah blah.... But there was this one girl who completely summed up the entire thing in these lines....and I'm hoping there are more people who think like her.....

When I see a girl/women smoking I think she is either low class, high class, a hoar (sic!), a virgin, a lonely single woman, a happily married CEO, a total addict, a frivolous spender, an alcoholic, a con artist, a school teacher, an artist, deep, naive, unhealthy, on a diet, a coffee lover, foreign, self-destructive, unhygienic, classic, a joke, daring, ordinary...