Marie Claire's "Stiletto Stoners" Article Strikes a Cord For All Career Minded Women Who Like to Unwind With a Bowl Instead of a Bottle

As many of you know an article entitled “Stiletto Stoners” appeared in the October 2009 issue of Marie Claire, and I must say I was beyond thrilled to read such a realistic view of the pro-pot lifestyle choice in a nationally syndicated publication.

While I may not yet be a stiletto stoner by Marie Claire’s standards, I am in fact a strong career-minded woman starting out in my field of choice and I do love my stilettos and I yearn for the day that I’ll be financially able to slip on a pair of those beautiful designer creations instead of my Payless knockoffs. And to top it off, yes, I do prefer to relax after a long day with a bowl of green rather than a bottle of alcohol.

Like Jennifer Pelham,* I also hate the term pothead because of the negative connotations its come to encompass over the years of prohibition, but I stand proudly as a woman of conviction and I ask, who should have the right to tell me what I can and can’t put in my body? I believe that this decision is one that only I can make and it really shouldn’t be anyone else’s business how I unwind.

I’m not the only woman who believes this way either. According to the Marie Claire article a recent study by The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration showed, “an estimated 8 million American women smoked up in the past year – a lowball figure that reflects only those willing to cop to it.” And don’t be fooled, this estimate includes women of many social ranks across all tax brackets. That’s right, pot isn’t just for the hippies and lackeys anymore (although I suspect that was never the truth in the first place).

Not long after reading the “Stiletto Stoner” article I met a male student who was interested in joining (and has since done so) the chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy that I started on the University of Oklahoma campus. He told me that he was very excited to meet women who smoke and women that are so open about their smoking at that. Confused and stunned that he had apparently never met a female stoner before, I enquired further. Sure enough, I was his first experience with an open female smoker, followed soon after by his second and third experiences as the two remaining executive board members for our chapter showed up for our meeting, both of whom are female smokers.

“We all smoke our own way,” I explained to him. “And rarely together. We are all so busy that there just never seems to be enough time to get together for a simple smoke session.”

In fact what I told him was completely true. As we have gotten more involved on our campus and with our budding careers, we have all taken to particular times for smoking and rarely does it happen when we’re all in the same room. Typically when we are together we are working on changing our campus, our town, our state, and our country. I have traded my daytime toke sessions for meetings and conference calls, opting for pre-bedtime bowls instead, our VP only smokes on occasion when her boyfriend brings her a special treat, and our secretary/treasurer is involved in so many organizations on campus that I’m pretty sure she only smokes in her sleep, which is not very often.

We are all strong women who want serious careers where we can really make things happen. We want to be the movers and shakers of the next generation of female empowerment but mixed with elegance and grace, and we want to be free to smoke our weed without worrying that all our hard work has been for nothing simply because some men wearing expensive suits in D.C. don’t understand us, nor do they care to understand or accommodate the millions of Americans that see things just a little differently.

With that being said, I’d like to thank the writers and editors of Marie Claire for shedding such a major light on this in-the-closet issue and contributing (whether inadvertently or not) to bringing this issue to the national stage for debate. Your article was artfully written and wonderfully executed and it has given me (and many women across the country, I’m sure) the confidence to go forth in our careers without feeling the need to compromise our ways of life.

*Names have been changed by Marie Claire.