Smoking was supposed to be on its way out \u2014 not completely gone, but definitely uncool.<\/p>\n
For years, cigarette smoking in celebrity culture has read as more grimy than glamorous. When celebs were pictured smoking, it was in paparazzi gotcha shots, not in styled studio shoots. Those tabloid images acted as a kind of public shaming: Even in an age of wellness, optimization and personal branding, the rich and famous sometimes indulge their bad habits. When famous people were caught smoking<\/a>, the story was usually about backlash (like the response to Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet lighting up<\/a> at a Beyonc\u00e9 concert in 2023). But now something has shifted. The cigarette is returning not as a scandal, but as a symbol of style.<\/p>\n Smoking is even back on the covers of magazines, that media space where the latest definition of cool gets ordained. And not just any magazines. Oughties \u201cit” girl and beauty mogul Kylie Jenner recently graced the cover of Vanity Fair<\/a>,\u00a0sitting on a bed striking a confrontational pose as she lights a cigarette. It\u2019s not the first image of the cosmetics founder lighting up. She smokes a cigarette in a music video with Charli XCX<\/a> released earlier this year. And she\u2019s in famous company: From Sabrina Carpenter\u2019s pop songs<\/a> to Dakota Johnson<\/a>\u2019s movies, cigarettes seem to be everywhere.<\/p>\n And once again, they\u2019re being used to convey coolness rather than to evoke shame.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s a reflection of the times,\u201d Mariah Wellman<\/a>, a communication professor at Michigan State University who studies wellness rhetoric and influencers, tells Yahoo. She suggests that the return of the staged cigarette marks the death of the \u201cclean girl\u201d and the birth of a darker aesthetic fueled by Y2K nostalgia, the glorification of thinness and a burgeoning sense of disillusionment.<\/p>\n What the cigarette means right now<\/p>\n If cigarettes are suddenly back in the frame, it\u2019s because they suit the mood. \u201cWe have moved on from clean girl culture and we’re interested in this sort of hedonistic, slightly rebellious, even nihilist culture,\u201d says Wellman. Pop culture is starting to grow bored with self-optimization and more interested in looking messy and a little destructive<\/a> \u2014 think \u201cBrat Summer<\/a>\u201d \u2014 a vibe that suits cigarettes. In popular media, smoking signals someone is \u201ccool, edgy and sexy,\u201d according to Grace Kong<\/a>, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine with expertise in preventing youth tobacco use.<\/p>\n Cigarettes are part of several styles that are making their 20-year returns<\/a>: old Hollywood glamour, indie sleaze<\/a> and early-2000s waifishness<\/a>. Young people are the ones driving these nostalgic trends<\/a>. But Gen Z-ers didn\u2019t grow up in smoke-filled restaurants or during the peak of aggressive anti-smoking campaigns. They know smoking is bad, but they\u2019ve never lived in a smokers\u2019 world. To these young adults, smoking holds \u201ca promise of nostalgia and simpler times,\u201d real or imagined, says Wellman.<\/p>\n Amid global instability and optimization burnout there is \u201cthis momentum toward that cool guy, greaser, \u2018We don’t really care because the world is burning,\u2019 kind of vibe,\u201d she adds. That \u201cwe don\u2019t care\u201d attitude, however, is more aesthetic than absolute. Wellman believes that cigarettes may no longer be seen as incompatible with health and wellness \u2014 values that still matter to young people. \u201cGirls are going to Pilates and yoga, and also smoking,\u201d she says. These women are focused on optimizing their bodies while picking up a harmful habit.<\/p>\n This phenomenon also hints at a more cynical utility beneath the aesthetic: the return of the thinness ideal. \u201cWe’ve got GLP-1 culture, the returning trend of thinness and people getting smaller and smaller and smaller. People feel that pressure,\u201d says Wellman, who points out that the nicotine in cigarettes is a more accessible tool for appetite suppression<\/a> than expensive weight loss medications. \u201cEverything is kind of colliding in this perfect storm, and cigarettes are a reflection of it all,\u201d Wellman says. Smoking \u201cmight be a promise of a smaller, skinnier body. It might be a promise of making friends and finding common ground. It might be an \u2018eff you to the world around you.\u201d Cigarettes, for better or worse (it\u2019s definitely worse), symbolize it all.<\/p>\n Smoking rates are low \u2014 but will celebrities smoking change that?<\/p>\n The rise of staged cigarettes appearing in photo shoots, music videos and movies doesn\u2019t necessarily correlate with the number of people actually smoking. In fact, new data<\/a> reveals that the cigarette smoking rate among U.S. adults fell below 10% in 2024 for the first time in recorded history. But that doesn\u2019t make the imagery meaningless.<\/p>\n \u201cResearch shows that exposure to glamorized images of smoking can subtly influence perceptions of risk and desirability and increase the likelihood that young people may experiment with cigarettes,\u201d says Kong. \u201cWhen high-profile figures like Kylie Jenner showcase it, both on social media and in widely circulated magazines, it can normalize and glamorize the behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n Gen Z-ers may be particularly vulnerable because of their distance from anti-smoking campaigns. \u201cAlthough they have been exposed to anti-smoking messages, they did not grow up during a time when smoking was widespread. Many have not personally witnessed how tobacco marketing shaped behavior in previous generations,\u201d says Kong. They also may not know anyone who\u2019s suffered the health consequences of smoking. As smoking rates have declined in recent decades, so have rates of lung cancer<\/a>, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma<\/a>. Fewer people are dying from smoking-related diseases, and it\u2019s a huge public health win.<\/p>\n But it may come with an unwanted side effect: The share of Americans who think that smoking poses a serious risk declined slightly between 2006 and 2015, according to a Duke University study<\/a>. \u201cPeople think that we are done with this, we\u2019re past it, that everyone knows that smoking is bad and it’s not a thing,\u201d says Wellman. \u201cBut when we see way more neutral smoking, that’s going to act as permission when there’s nothing to push against it.\u201d<\/p>\n