“It’s what makes life interesting, finding the balance between cigarettes and tofu,” said Gwyneth Paltrow, slightly surprisingly, back in 2013. Even more eyebrow-raising is the news that, in some quarters, smoking is coming back into fashion.
The harm that smoking does to our health is well researched and widely understood. It is known to increase the risk of at least 16 types of cancer and 94% of UK adults recognise smoking as a risk factor for cancer.
Charli xcx, whose latest album spawned the brat summer trend, has described the concept as “pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra”. At her 32nd birthday party in LA this week, her fellow pop star Rosalía gifted her a bouquet chaotically arranged with cigarettes.
Dua Lipa, Bella Hadid, both Obama daughters and Florence Pugh have all been photographed smoking recently. Ben Affleck was recently pictured carrying several cartons of Marlboro Menthols.
The Instagram account Cigfluencers, “aka HOT PEOPLE keeping the art of SMOKING & BEING COOL alive…”, shares pictures of celebrities, including The Bear stars Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri, mid-cigarette.
The internet lit up recently when actors Paul Mescal and Natalie Portman appeared outside a bar in white T-shirts and jeans, smoking cigarettes and provoking intense speculation.
Even sportspeople – the most virtuously healthy of celebrities – are involved. At the Olympics, the 28-year-old Team GB golfer Charley Hull has been speaking about her habit. “I do smoke on the course,” she said on Tuesday. “It’s a habit, but I won’t do this week.” Paris 2024 organisers have stipulated that all Olympic venues are non-smoking.
At Copenhagen fashion week this week, going for a natural wine and a cigarette has been the choice for many attenders. “I wouldn’t call myself a smoker,” said Maria, a content creator in her 30s. “I just smoke a tiny cigarette here and there. It’s like being on holiday.”
Michelle Gry Sonne, 33, a PR, said: “We like when things are a little casual and not so perfect and the cigarette feeds into that. You are out with friends and you are drinking, you are smoking and you know it’s not healthy but it’s your right to just enjoy yourself.”
People in the Danish city favour thin cigarettes. “We are very much about the aesthetic. All our food looks nice. Our drinks look nice. This is very Copenhagen,” Gry Sonne added. “We like the purist form of everything, we like proper alcohol, natural wine and real cigarettes.”
At a show on Tuesday, the wholesome Scandinavian brand Caro Editions sent denim shorts down the catwalk with kitschy designs showing red lips parted by cigarettes. At New York fashion week in February the buzzy designers LaQuan Smith and Christian Cowan even had models smoking on the catwalk.
In the 50s and 60s, smoking was seen to embody cool and glamour, with actors including James Dean, Audrey Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich, and musicians such as Serge Gainsbourg, often seen lighting up again as soon as they had extinguished the last.
Years of public health campaigns about the fatal impacts of smoking caused it to fall out of favour. Overall rates have been dropping in the UK, according to the World Population Review, and there is a decline globally.
According to Dr Sarah Jackson, a senior research fellow in University College London’s tobacco and alcohol research group, recent data suggests declines in smoking since 2021 have been greater among younger adults than older age groups.
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But Hazel Cheeseman, the deputy chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), cautioned against complacency. “In the 1990s, smoking rates stopped falling and started to increase among teenagers. This was an era when tobacco marketing was rife, and smoking had cultural cache. If the 1990s are back in fashion let’s hope we don’t see this repeated.”
Complacency could be part of what is happening today. Surveys by Ash found that the younger people were the less likely they were to be aware of the full health risks of smoking. “We know that mass media campaigns which communicate hard-hitting messages about the health risks of smoking impact all generations,” said Cheeseman. “However, such campaigns have been very limited since 2010.”
The 2023 UK Tobacco Industry Interference Index found that “the UK has made no progress in protecting public health policies from the commercial interests of the tobacco industry”.
Big tobacco is clever. Phil Chamberlain, the deputy director of the tobacco control research group at the University of Bath, said: “Despite advertising of tobacco products being banned in the UK for over 20 years, the tobacco industry has lots of ways of protecting its image and its profits.
“Just because we don’t see adverts on the TV or cigarettes sold in pubs any more, doesn’t mean the industry isn’t still working very hard to keep itself popular and profitable behind the scenes.”
A recent study linked social media use with an increased risk of cigarette smoking and vaping among 10- to 25-year-olds. Those who spent more than seven hours on social media a day were found to be more than 3.5 times as likely to be smokers.
Cheeseman said: “We know smoking-related imagery can encourage people to try smoking. It is therefore plausible that these depictions of smoking might influence some young people to try a cigarette.
“Younger smokers routinely underestimate the risks of smoking and overestimate their ability to stop … Smoking might start off as part of a brat summer but it’s unlikely to be where it ends.”
