It’s a “trend” (read: way of life) many have been noticing for the past couple of years: smoking. Its steady rise back into mainstream culture arguably reaching a crescendo with Brat summer, the Charli XCX-fueled phenomenon-by-way-of-an-album that laid out what constitutes a “brat,” at least aesthetically: “pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra.” Note that pack of cigs was placed at the top of the list, even if XCX was largely just bullshitting/trolling the press…as is the wont of a true brat.
And yet, it was as though she “manifested” the full-fledged opening of the floodgates when it came to “social smoking” being back in a big way. Unapologetically so. For, where once there was a stigma about it, the summer of 2024 seemed to confirm something that had been brewing for a while: if the “culture” was going to be subjected to the retro practices being consistently touted and implemented by a certain administration helmed by a certain orange creature, then it wanted to at least get back one “good” retro practice out of it: the joy of smoking. No matter that everyone, by now, is well-aware of the bodily harm it guarantees.
Here, too, another factor is at play with regard to the “why” of cigarettes a.k.a. “cancer sticks” taking off so much in recent times: it’s apparent that more and more people aren’t seeing much of a viable future for the world, so why not really find (a.k.a. buy, for an extremely exorbitant price) the thing you love and let it kill you? It’s not like there’s going to be an assured tomorrow anyway, n’est-ce pas? So “let it rip.” Or, in this case, let it burn. Put another way by Jared Oviatt a.k.a. “@cigfluencers” (now the go-to person for articles about why cigarettes are “back”), “The dream of stability, owning a home, financial security feels increasingly out of reach. So the question becomes: why not do what you want? Why not smoke? Nothing matters!”
However, speaking to that aforementioned point about the exorbitant price, the people smoking are actually the ones who can own a home, do have financial security. To be sure, there seems to be something to the idea that “only” celebrities are smoking again (ergo, in some enraged people’s opinions, trying to make it “cool” again)—perhaps because the cost of a pack of cigarettes, to them, amounts to pennies. Which is why Rosalía brought an entire “cigarette bouquet” to Charli XCX for her 32nd birthday on August 2, 2024. Because, while roughly fifteen dollars a pack (when bought from a metropolitan city like L.A.) is alms to the richies, it makes far more of a dent in the average person’s so-called salary. Hence, the popularity of cigarettes among celebrities not necessarily causing a major uptick in smoking among “the commoners.” Who tend to prefer vaping anyway, a much more déclassé form of smoking, with only slightly less harmful health effects. Even so, Lana Del Rey remains committed to it, despite previously being one of the earlier known celebrities of the twenty-first century to parade her cig habit (once an indelible part of her visuals).
But then, that’s because Del Rey was always touting twentieth century views and “ideals” in the first place. It’s only now that “everyone else” has “caught up” to her (as she herself presently chooses vaping instead—to which her recent opening act, Addison Rae, would say, “Ew, I hate vaping”) by allowing themselves to fall behind. And why shouldn’t they, when everything around them reflects a society that has entered a time machine, reinvoking the worst of what “hippies” and “crusaders” fought against in the mid-twentieth century: racism, sexism and an overtly patriarchal society.
Alas, since all of that has bubbled up to the surface again with a vengeance, many seem to think that, at the bare minimum, that should include the erstwhile “glamor” of cigarettes. Before the myth of their “doctor recommended” cachet was debunked with an early 1960s study that definitively concluded cigarettes cause lung cancer. It was in 1964, with the publication of Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, that things for the tobacco industry started to get really dicey. Because that’s when the PSAs, both in print and on TV, started coming out, making increasingly indelible impressions on people as the decades wore on.
The 90s were an especially “anti-smoking” time, in terms of campaigns going hard against tobacco. One ad, seeking to satirize the supposed glamor of smoking now mostly associated with Old Hollywood films, depicted a man and woman with “movie star vibes” as the former asks, “Mind if I smoke?” Her reply: “Care if I die?” The message was out: smoking was decidedly gross, selfish and, worst of all (for men and women alike), caused impotence. And yes, it’s almost certain that’s a problem for “cigfluencer” Matty Healy, who went from dating the “wholesome” Taylor Swift to the “brat-adjacent” Gabbriette, a fellow smoker. Because, despite the 90s being always on-trend with the likes of those in the “Brat orbit,” anti-smoking isn’t something that took hold from that hallowed decade. Besides, even the it girls of the day (e.g., Kate Moss, Chloë Sevigny, Winona Ryder) clearly never paid much attention to such ads. Or the influence their unabashed smoking had on those who wanted to be like them.
Even so, that didn’t stop the effects of the anti-smoking movement at the government level, with California in particular being ahead of the curve on banning smoking in restaurants, workplaces and bars starting in 1995 (though Beverly Hills specifically started banning smoking in certain public places in 1987). Rather ironic considering that Hollywood was the place that started selling cigarettes as “glamorous” in the first place. The dive that the reputation of the cigarette took by the mid-2000s was so noticeable that it can best be summed up by Aaron Eckhart’s character, Nick Naylor, in 2006’s Thank You For Smoking, when he laments that the only people you see smoking in movies anymore are “RAVs”: Russians, Arabs and villains (the former two often neatly fitting into the latter category for Americans anyway).
Enter Mary-Kate Olsen, who, despite her twin also being a smoker, was arguably the first to really bring back cigarettes as a mark of “class” and “wealth.” This while also embodying the brat definition of wielding them as an accessory long before Charli XCX herself crystallized what brat even meant. MK’s cigarette-smoking advocacy reached an apex at her 2015 wedding to Olivier Sarkozy, an event that prompted Page Six to famously describe the reception as having “bowls and bowls filled with cigarettes, and everyone smoked the whole night.” It was a phrase—and scene—that pop culture enthusiasts couldn’t stop obsessing over. And maybe it took XCX’s Brat to “inspire” a new generation glom on to what Mary-Kate had already done for cigs anyway. Well, her and a few other 00s-era “bad girls,” including Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears (as a certain infamous 2008 Rolling Stone article phrased it, “She is an inbred swamp thing who chain-smokes”).
All of which is to say that, sure, the “coolness” of smoking has survived numerous threats to its clout in the years since the truth about its dangers was made public. But it—smoking—has always been there, just waiting in the wings to reemerge again as a viable thing to do for securing one’s “effortless” chicness. However, the fact that the confluence of retro political policies and stances on gender (de facto, gender roles) has aligned with smoking’s latest renaissance doesn’t seem like a coincidence at all. So much as an additional way to “mirror the past.” And to further undo all the human progress that was made since.
Genna Rivieccio
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