Sorry, but cigarettes really DO take a toll on looks

‘A basis to stop people smoking’

SMOKERS may defy health warnings by telling themselves their habit makes them look cool – but the latest evidence shows that smokers are less attractive to the opposite sex.

Telltale wrinkles from puffing on a cigarette may be to blame for people judging non-smokers to be better-looking.

A study asked more than 00 people to pick the most attractive twin where one of the two smoked and the other did not.

Men found the female nonsmokers most attractive in twothirds of cases, while women chose non-smoking men 68 per cent of the time.

Study co-author Professor Ian Penton-Voak from Bristol University said: ‘People hypothesise that smoking causes damage to the skin and appearance, but this is a really neat way of looking at it because these twins are genetically identical so we can control for genetic factors involved in ageing… we could use these sort of findings as a basis for future interventions to stop people smoking.’

Smoking can speed up ageing after only a decade. Nicotine causes narrowing of the blood vessels in the outermost layers of the skin, while the chemicals in tobacco smoke damage collagen and elastin, fibres which give the skin its elasticity.

The wrinkles this causes are added to by facial expressions made when smoking, such as pursing the lips when inhaling.

The researchers asked participants to pick the smoker and non-smoker from 23 sets of twins. Smokers were easily identified so they created prototype pictures to ensure facial expressions or poses could not alter the results.

Using these images, tweaked by a computer to standardise how smokers and non-smokers looked, they asked which were ‘more attractive’. Men and women both found the opposite sex more attractive when they did not smoke. Women found members of their own sex who did not smoke more beautiful in 70 per cent of cases, while for men the figure was 72 per cent.