In the new romantic dramedy “Materialists,” about 21st-century dating, Dakota Johnson loves cigarettes.
Playing Lucy, a New York matchmaker, she’s puffing when she gossips with a pal during a work party. Later, she holds a lighted cigarette near her face while flirting with an ex. There’s no hand-wringing over her smoking. She’s just a smoker. And she’s wildly on trend. That’s because, at least in the world of entertainment, cigarettes are once again cool.
“Materialists” is just the tip of the ash. The musicians Addison Rae and Lorde both mention smoking in recent singles. The stars of “The Bear” are smokers on- and offscreen. The “Housewives” count many among their ranks, and the Bravo enterprise recently had a viral moment thanks to smoking. Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd smoke in the big-screen comedy “Friendship,” while the chic Seema (Sarita Choudhury) on the series “And Just Like That” does as well. In the kitschy video for her track “Manchild” Sabrina Carpenter uses a fork as a cigarette holder. Even Beyoncé has lit up onstage during her Cowboy Carter Tour. In one instance, she throws the cigarette on a piano, which artfully ignites as she performs “Ya Ya.” If Beyoncé is doing it, you know it’s reached the upper echelon of culture.
And these smokers are largely celebrated. The overwhelming sentiment is: Sure, cigarettes are bad for you, but they make you look good — as evidenced by Lucy, who keeps her smokes in an elegant silver case, perhaps to emphasize how sleek the habit is, and brandishes them to show just how effortlessly hot she can look bringing one to her lips.
Jared Oviatt, the man behind the Instagram account @Cigfluencers, which features photos of celebrities glamorously smoking, told me he had noticed an upswing in material recently. When he started the account in 2021 he had to look harder to find content.
“In the early days I was really dipping into the archives,” he said. “There weren’t a lot of new examples.” Now, he said, “every week there’s at least one or two people where I’m like, ‘OK, that’s new.’”
Oviatt started @Cigfluencers, which has more than 68,000 followers, after coming across an image of Dua Lipa mid-puff. “I was like, ‘That is so crazy that this gorgeous woman that is a household name is so openly smoking cigs on her IG grid,’” he said. While Oviatt is a casual smoker — not “Post Malone-level multiple packs a day” — he said the appeal of a famous person smoking boils down to aesthetics.
“That general star power makes it that much cooler,” he said, noting that these people don’t seem to care whether their teeth or hands are damaged from the tobacco.
Cigarettes can also be evocative for other reasons. In the Rae and Lorde singles, there’s a wistfulness to smoking. For “Headphones On,” Rae sings, “Guess I gotta accept the pain / Need a cigarette to make me feel better.” The beat is jaunty, but the words are melancholic. A cigarette is a chic way to deal with existential angst.
The same goes for Lorde’s “What Was That.” She’s reminiscing about a past relationship when she and her partner took MDMA and kissed for hours. “I remember saying then, ‘This is the best cigarette of my life,’” she sings. “Well, I want you just like that.”
Lorde enjoyed that cigarette, but it also reminds her of the past.
Both Lorde and Rae have worked with the singer whom Oviatt credits with the smoking revival: Charli XCX, the Brat Summer pioneer who is a proud smoker. She even once received a bouquet of cigs for her birthday from Rosalía, another notable smoker. (The bouquet evoked the bowls of cigarettes Mary-Kate Olsen reportedly set out at her 2015 wedding to Olivier Sarkozy, a subversive, very French detail.)
Charli’s personal brand has been wrapped up in a hedonism mixed with nihilism that is in keeping with smoking. In Charli Land you party now, think about the consequences later or possibly never. For someone like Rae, who was once a squeaky clean online personality known for TikTok dances, aligning herself with Charli, and highlighting her cigarette habit, is a way to break free of her bubble gum persona.
