Celebrities like Hailey Bieber and Kylie Jenner are posing with cigarettes. Will it make smoking cool again?

Yahoo ^ | April 15, 2026 | Kerry Justich

[DoodleBob]

… If cigarettes are suddenly back in the frame, it’s because they suit the mood. “We have moved on from clean girl culture and we're interested in this sort of hedonistic, slightly rebellious, even nihilist culture,” says Wellman. Pop culture is starting to grow bored with self-optimization and more interested in looking messy and a little destructive — think “Brat Summer” — a vibe that suits cigarettes. In popular media, smoking signals someone is “cool, edgy and sexy,” according to Grace Kong, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine with expertise in preventing youth tobacco use.

Cigarettes are part of several styles that are making their 20-year returns: old Hollywood glamour, indie sleaze and early-2000s waifishness. Young people are the ones driving these nostalgic trends. But Gen Z-ers didn’t grow up in smoke-filled restaurants or during the peak of aggressive anti-smoking campaigns. They know smoking is bad, but they’ve never lived in a smokers’ world. To these young adults, smoking holds “a promise of nostalgia and simpler times,” real or imagined, says Wellman.

…

This phenomenon also hints at a more cynical utility beneath the aesthetic: the return of the thinness ideal. “We've got GLP-1 culture, the returning trend of thinness and people getting smaller and smaller and smaller. People feel that pressure,” says Wellman, who points out that the nicotine in cigarettes is a more accessible tool for appetite suppression than expensive weight loss medications. “Everything is kind of colliding in this perfect storm, and cigarettes are a reflection of it all,” Wellman says. Smoking “might be a promise of a smaller, skinnier body. It might be a promise of making friends and finding common ground. It might be an ‘eff you to the world around you.” Cigarettes, for better or worse…, symbolize it all.

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TOPICS: Health/Medicine; Society
KEYWORDS: smoking

[DoodleBob]

From “Demolition Man”, Edgar Friendly as played by Denis Leary:

You see, according to Cocteau's plan I'm the enemy, 'cause I like to think; I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I'm the kind of guy likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder - "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with the side order of gravy fries?" I WANT high cholesterol. I wanna eat bacon and butter and BUCKETS of cheese, okay? I want to smoke Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section. I want to run through the streets naked with green jello all over my body reading playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to, okay, pal? I've SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiener". You live up top, you live Cocteau's way: what he wants, when he wants, how he wants. Your other choice: come down here... and maybe starve to death.

[DoodleBob]

And of course…maybe we simply traded one problem for another…

[Beowulf9]

COPD, Lung Cancer, Emphysema, heart disease, stroke. These are NOT cool you won’t feel cool if you get them..

[Uncle Miltie]

What is this: Navy Day?

I think you two cornered the market on all things maritime!

[Uncle Miltie]

Hilariously, wrong thread!

[DoodleBob]

I was gonna say….

All good.

I thought that maybe Kylie Jenner enlisted. Anchos aweigh!

[SpaceBar]

Prior to World War One the only people who smoked cigarettes were french homosexuals and prostitutes.

[SunkenCiv]

There’s a big sail on all things nautical.

[Libloather]

She's smokin' before she even wakes up in the morning.

[Uncle Miltie]

Don’t be so Stern! Take a Bow! You guys could be on the new exclusive FR maritime executive committee; we’ll call it the Star Board!

If issues arise we can debate them, you’ll be Pro and I’ll Conn.

[SunkenCiv]

[singing] Man the capstan off we go as the fiddler swings us round...

[MayflowerMadam]

Great legs, for sure.

[DoodleBob]

[Uncle Miltie]

Cigarettes only kill 1/3rd of people who smoke them.

So enjoy!

[Glad2bnuts]

I smoked for years, I quit when I was 62 or so. I enjoyed it, but I no longer have a covered deck and hot tub. It was my best smoking room. Years ago, people gave up on indoor smoking, which was gross even to smokers in homes. At pool halls, bowling alleys and bars it was part of the reason to go. Notice how bowling and pool leagues, along with tavern life died after smoking was banned.

If cigarettes were under $3 a pack, I may smoke again, I loved it, especially when I had a decent cigar and a long car ride.

We traded cigarettes for Covid damaged lungs...which smokers didn’t get, obesity and Diabetes. We all are going to die. My dad died from lung cancer at 78, he was active till a month before. My mom died from emphysema at 71, She wouldn’t quit, but knew what was coming. Mom and Dad smoked about 6 packs a day between them. I smoked about a pack a day average, but it was mostly on weekends. Then again, no bowling leagues, no pool teams, no dart leagues, and no hanging out at the tavern on weekends.

Life without cigarettes may be longer, or it might just seem that way. Like a car ride for 20 hours straight.

[bluemooncat]

I smoked a pack a day for 25 years. I quit 8 years ago, and I feel much better. I am grateful for someone in this site who recommended Allen Carr’s book “The easy way to stop smoking”. I read it about 3 times in 5 years, and I researched the author. Anyway, that book made me stop smoking. I’m very happy about it. SPOILER ALERT: this is the key sentence of the book “you smoke to feel for 5 minutes the same way a non smoker feels all the time”. The story of the woman who only smoked one cigarette a day was very compelling too. One cigarette a day seems like a not big deal, but her drama was that she lived her entire day just to reach the time after lunch when she had her cigarette, day after day after day....

[HartleyMBaldwin]

Now it ain’t that I don’t smoke myself
And I don’t reckon they’ll hurt my health
Been smokin’ ‘em all my life and I ain’t dead yet

[lee martell]

Looking at the second sentence of this piece, I need to ask;
when did “Clean Girl Culture” happen? I didn’t notice anything. Must have been somewhere between Madonna’s “SEX” coffee table book (1992) and the infamous “WAP” music video, performed by Cardi-B., Glo-Rilla, and Megan Thee Stallion, released 2025.

[Steven Tyler]

How to discourage men from smoking
change the picture printed on the pack of smokes

Use a picture of the average lefty left antifa terrorist thing with blue hair and a dozen metal piercings in her face.....