Both Lorde and [Addison] Rae have worked with the singer whom [Jared Oviatt, the man behind the Instagram account @Cigfluencers,] 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....
[W]hen [Beyoncé] lights up onstage during “Ya Ya,” a song in which she proclaims, “I just wanna shake my ass” even as she pointedly critiques the American dream. And perhaps that’s the ultimate reason for the cigarette revival: A desire to burn it down, lungs and all.
Pyromania, quite the rage these days.
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60 comments:
Charley Hull of wimmens golf, too…
Hopefully this is a rebellion against the health Nazis pressuring us to make every decision about making our lives a day or 2 longer. But I doubt it.
Either way, smoking is objectively cool and there's nothing they can do about that.
There are very few ladies playing in the LPGA these days.
Unfortunately, they won’t all get lung cancer.
"...smoking is objectively cool..."
You forgot the snark tags, Tim.
Smoking stopped being cool in May of 1976, when I quit.
Are we going through an inversion where RFK Jr., MAHA, and healthy living are now right wing so now the left is deciding that they need to be rough and living in the moment? Will the Marlboro Man be replaced with the Newport Non-Binary?
I quit over 25 years ago, mostly at my daughter's request. I still occasionally miss that first cig with coffee in a relaxed morning, but I've never been tempted to start up again, not once. You want to smoke? Fire away, doesn't bother me at all. I don't mind the smell of smoke either, if it's outside.
The type of press Lorde gets these days.
It wasn't hard to predict smoking coming back with pot smoking being normalized and vaping stores everywhere. I'm ok with the habit, but I think rather than a surgeon general warning; I think if you indulge in the habit, you shouldn't be allowed welfare money from the state. It is how I treated my daughters in relation to smoking and tattoos. You are free to do it, but if you can afford that stuff, then you don't need money from me.
Just don't look. There are alternatives to mindless pop culture.
Leland at 11:05 👆🏽
When they invented vaping, it was a much safer alternative to smoking and had the potential to save many lives. (Since you weren't putting burning smoke in your lungs.) There is still some debate as to the safety of nicotine, but it's still obviously better than inhaling tar and other burned by-products of tobbacco leaves.
But then the buzzkills banned vaping in all the places that actual cigarettes were banned and people started switching back to proven-cancer-causing cigarettes.
Add into that the legalization (and actual encouragement) of marijuana joints and I'll bet that we'll start to see major increases in lung cancer rates in the coming years.
uh - Watch any Hollywood movie - from any era - smoking is used often. Not new.
Hollywood is boring, violent and out of ideas - so lame props to the rescue. "so cool"
These not very clever people who run Hollywood have the audacity to lecture us on their pet Leftist causes.
"I won't make a movie if the script calls for anyone to smoke," says Shiittehead Extraordinaire Rob Reiner. As if the world is just dying to see to see the next RR film. A meathead then, a meathead now.
"Butt Out" received mostly positive reviews. Conservative writer Brian C. Anderson praised the episode saying the portrayal of Reiner, Hollywood and their anti-smoking efforts "perfectly captures the Olympian arrogance and illiberalism of liberal elites."[6] Anderson said this was particularly illustrated by a scene in the episode in which Reiner yells at a sawmill worker for smoking in a bar, and tells him he should relax by spending time in an expensive vacation house like Reiner does. Anderson described it as a "classic sequence".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butt_Out
Tearing out all of the drywall in a chain-smoking couple's multi-decade residence isn't cool.
assuming this actually catches on..
WHAT do we do? when they all start losing weight?
I quit smoking in 1990. When I quit, the price of a pack of smokes in Chicago was around $1.50. If inflation was the only factor involved, the cost of that pack in 2025 dollars would be about $3.70. My understanding is the actual cost a pack of smokes in Chicago now is about $12, of which almost 8 bucks are tax. Paying a ton of tax doesn't seem objectively cool, but your mileage may vary.
When the UK introduced (huge) dire health warnings on packets of cigarettes, someone started selling stickers you could use to cover them up that said "Smoking Makes Me Look Big And Clever"
Loved smoking. Love not smoking more.
Gross. About the only control freak initiative I ever agreed with was the ban on indoor smoking in public places. The world of our childhoods must have smelled like shit and we didn’t even realize it. These days I associate that smell with poverty, thrift stores, wino apartments, and early disability.
A bit Karen-ish for a Cracker, but there you go.
Jeff Megall: [in his office] Sony has a futuristic sci-fi movie they're looking to make.
Nick Naylor: Cigarettes in space?
Jeff Megall: It's the final frontier, Nick.
Nick Naylor: But wouldn't they blow up in an all oxygen environment?
Jeff Megall: Probably. But it's an easy fix. One line of dialogue. 'Thank God we invented the... you know, whatever device.'
The only place I know that still smells like cigarette smoke is my local Alano Club (AA). They smoked so many cigarettes in there that it will smell like smoke until the day it is torn down. I kind of like it even though I quit years ago.
I've never ever thought of smoking cigarettes as cool. Mainly because my dad and some relatives smoked and I just thought it was disgusting. Also because when they smoked, we all smoked.
It amazes me watching old TV shows and movies when nearly everyone is lighting up all the time.
That was one of my dating lines in the sand: smokers just smelled bad and kissing one was gross.
Is the choice to smoke or cancer? There has been no progress to abort the latter.
There is evidence suggesting a link between maternal smoking during pregnancy and an increased risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in offspring. Mother's obesity, gestation diabetes, SSRI use, antibiotics and, of course, exposure to toxicants are the pathways that lead to autism risk. Autism is a public health problem. Aggressive people who struggle to learn cause problems in society on every level. Public health policies should be aimed at reducing exposure to these risk factors. And it's not just during the pregnancy, of course that time is crucial, but what kind of "chemtrails" were both parents exposed to before conceiving their problem child?
I started smoking in high school, and then in college as well. Back when students and professors all smoked, even in the classrooms. I haven't smoked for 45 years now, and I feel a whole lot better for having quit. However, cigarette smoke doesn't bother me. And sometimes, when I am at an outdoor venue or in a foreign country which allows smoking, I have to admit that the smoke is still a pleasant smell to me. But I know that I will never start up again.
Actors were really at a loss with what to do with their hands. without all the cigarette business. Amazing the space that took up.
Some tried compensating by chewing all the time. Not the same effect, and chewing what?
I quit smoking my senior year in high school. I almost restarted in college but weighed the cost of cigarettes vs. beer and made the choice for beer. When smoking was still allowed in bars and restaurants, I didn't like coming home from a night out smelling of smoke but it wasn't a deal breaker. When smoking bans were first proposed I was against them because I figured the business owners knew their customers and would ban it when and if it made economic sense to them. On the other hand, it had an unintended consequence that I love. Once smoking was banned, every bar that could built a nice outdoor patio and that was a great improvement (at least in the sumer)
But then the buzzkills banned vaping in all the places that actual cigarettes were banned
Yeah, I'm a buzzkill. Was sitting at a restaurant when some "cool" girl decided to start vaping, and I could no longer smell or taste my food because of it. Waitress told her to stop, because it is a restaurant. Who would have thought restaurants would want people to enjoy the food they served? I'm fine if she was to inhale stuff, but if she won't swallow it, then she needs to stop or do it somewhere else.
I pretty much miss that lovely morning combo of:
1. a Marlboro
2. a halfway decent cup of 4 bit coffee in a real coffee cup at a real coffee shop
3. a paper copy of either the NYTime or the WSJ.
What a way to start a day!
As of now, there is no number 1, number 2 in a no-go and there's 50/50 chance I can find number 3 in my neighborhood.
if there's ever a chance to take the whole package . . . who knows?
Chewing greens, browns, and blacks spares everyone else your joy.
There are few things nicer than a coffee, a brandy, and a cigarette after a nice meal in a restaurant. Those days are gone forever.
Peachy said...
"uh - Watch any Hollywood movie - from any era - smoking is used often."
Yeah, but at least they warn you with an advisory "Contains Violence, Adult Situations and - gasp - Smoking."
"The world of our childhoods must have smelled like shit and we didn’t even realize it. "
Indeed. I remember having to defumigate my clothes after visiting the folks during college.
We need a publicly funded campaign to stop this in its tracks- just spitballing, I would say we should call it, "Just Say No To Cigarettes."
How can we complain- we are making it legal to smoke pot, right?
Speaking of smoking, pot, and smells; anyone else been the Las Vegas recently?
There is a picture of a young LPGA player having a cigarette while signing autographs for a couple of young girls. Charlie somebody. Took me back to when everybody smoked, and BTW, everybody was thin, and anxiety was let pervasive.
Yes, smoking helps with weight control and is a quit hit anti anxiety drug. People did it for a reason.
Bond cool!
"The world of our childhoods must have smelled like shit and we didn’t even realize it"
I was walking down the street in Boston a couple of years ago and a young lady smelled like she had just had a cigarette, and well, in the '70s, in college, most of the girls smoked, so I enjoyed the scent of it. But it can certainly get out of hand.
In response to Althouse question, I don't know. Here's the name of Lorde's latest album: Solar Power. From the linked story, I quote:
"However, she told the Guardian that, although the record was influenced by the natural world, it isn’t a protest album about the effects of mankind on earth. “I’m not a climate activist, I’m a pop star,” she explained. “I stoke the fire of a giant machine, spitting out emissions as I go. There is a lot I don’t know."
She seems consistent in her morality. It is interesting that at wikipedia, it says she refers to the album as her "weed" album and has a track called "Stoned at the Nail Salon". She wrote another track, "The Path", after a day of swimming at Larry David's home in Martha's Vineyard. Supposedly "The Path" "addresses the pressures of fame". I suppose it will get to you after a day in Martha's Vineyard, or as it says, attending the Met Gala. Perhaps what we saw at this year's Met Gala was those cracking under the pressure.
“Yes, smoking helps with weight control and is a quit hit anti anxiety drug. People did it for a reason.”
So much of the smoking world we grew up with was directly attributable to the anxiety, trauma, boredom, and opportunity of the Second World War. Not surprising it’s waned with generational change.
The Chinese, now there are some real pros when it came to smoking. Taipei airport, you walked through that place and I swear, back in the 90s it was so thoroughly saturated with cigarette smoke residue, that you got a contact nicotine buzz just by walking through the place and breathing. Geez, it was bad. Even the walls were nicotine brown. And at the time, it was just after getting of a 13 hour flight from the US, so you were already jet-lagged and exhausted, when you'd be slammed with this - and still one more leg to go. Awful.
No one, but no one, can out cool Humphrey and Lauren having a smoke. Or even just caging a light for her cigarette: "You know how to whistle don't you Steve? Just put your lips together and blow." Whew, got myself all hot and bothered.there.
I started smoking the first day of my freshman year at college. I quit several times, but finally for good in January 1983.
Smoking was one of the dumbest things I have done in my life. Marrying my first wife was the dumbest thing I ever did.
"It’s even being celebrated for the way it makes characters look cool or powerful"
Check back in 30 years and see how cool and powerful it makes those people with emphysema look- hooked up to an oxygen bottle with a tube looped over their ears and barely able to get up out of their chair.
I blame Roger Sterling
Oil is back and so is smoking. Ask Billy Bob Thornton in "Landman,"
You ever been to Japan? The whole country smokes. Ninety-year-old men sucking on filterless Pall Malls, then doing an hour of tai chi in the park. Same thing in China, same thing in Italy, and they don't even exercise. All they do is drink wine, eat pasta and fսck. You know what those three countries have in common? Lung cancer ain't even in the top ten leading causes of death. So it ain't cigarettes. It's sugar and sh¡t like that that [pop tart] kills you. I'm telling you.
Fact checkers criticize Billy Bob's character's argument.
I remember quitting in 1984. They stopped selling my brand at the commissary. Price for a carton was $4.50 there, as the taxes didn't apply.
Also, I didn't want to subject my newborn daughter to it.
It's a shame the powers that be have completely vilified vaping nicotine products, as every study I am aware of has shown vaping to be much safer than tobacco use. I suppose the sight of obnoxious teens blowing vape vapor everywhere was just too much to bear.
They have gone so far as to outlaw flavored products.
I am surprised no one has developed an invisible, smokeless, vape product. Hard to hate what you cannot see.
Thankfully, the weed industry has embraced vaping, thuis protecting the technology.
"Lung cancer ain't even in the top ten leading causes of death."
I asked perplexity "Where does lung cancer rank in leading causes of death in Japan?", here's the answer provided:
In summary, lung cancer is the foremost cause of cancer mortality and ranks among the top overall causes of death in Japan, particularly prominent in older adults and men, making it one of the leading causes of death nationally.
FWIW...
Leftwing idiocy: Smoking Pot is good for you. But smoking cigarettes is bad for you.
Lets be clear the health risks of smoking tobbacco are exaggerated IF - I mean IF - you quit early enough in life. A man who smokes and quits at 40, has the same death rate from Lung cancer as someone who never smoked.
Its the same thing with alcohol, you can drink heavily when you're young. I don't mean dsyfunctional 1 bottle of Vodka a day drinking but y'know 1 bottle of wine a day and if you quit at 40, you'll be OK. Its the 30 years of abuse that cause disease, and the heavy drinking while middle aged and old that are the danger.
I just read Jack Keroauc's book about his navy/college life before 1946, and its incredible how much drinking there is in it. He wasn't a alcoholic. But unless his duties as a student, merchant seaman or student required him not to drink , he was hitting the bars or having whiskies/beers etc. with his friends, family, or girlfriends. Its all just so matter of fact, and taken for granted.
He kept that level of drinking up until he got to his late 40s and then his liver gave out.
The Doctors and medical establishment know this, but they also know how stupid the public is. They the following would happen if they told the truth:
What the Doctor says: you can smoke till your 40, but then you must quit.
What the Public hears: I can smoke and it wont hurt me. Woo Hoo!
"What the Doctor says: you can smoke till your 40, but then you must quit."
That doesn't work for everybody. My mother's doctor told her at 39 that the damage was done and she could continue to smoke or she could live. She quit immediately but ended up dying of emphysema at 67. Her last 8-10 years were no picnic for her.
Now that I'm retired decided to check out the local off-road cycling pedestrian path. Almost exactly 10,000 steps round trip gate to gate. According to my fitness tracker, today not being an aerobics day, 4.65 miles in 1 hr 30 min. Yesterday was walking with 25 minutes of aerobic running. 5.01 miles in 1 hr 26 min. Tomorrow I'll get to 30 minutes aerobic, where I'll stay. 3 times a week, MWF. Why the distance difference? At one end the path continues into a park and then to a campsite for another 1/2 mile or so.
I have 2 Navy friends I'm still in touch with on Facebook, my age and one a few years younger, smokers back then and apparently continued, walking around with oxygen tanks. I find it hard to feel sympathy for them, or anyone else my age with COPD. Because almost all, if not all of them, were smokers, And we knew way back then that smoking was bad for you- and they did it anyway. I told my children when younger that such people were object lessons in how not to live your life. They had one uncle who was a great object lesson in how not to live your life. Would be my age if he were alive. We raised 5 non-smokers non drug users thanks to object lessons.
Some life choices people make are wrong, and the people making them know they're wrong when they make them. I'm at a loss as to why. Others, as Maynard said, you don't know are wrong until later, and if you have a first wife (or husband) instead of just one you likely didn't know before you made it.
Not long after the recent "These kids never learned the proper way to be a barfly" post here, I came across a video of a 20-something couple reacting to Billy Joel's "Piano Man". I can't find the reaction video now, but I was struck by how the "kids" wondered out loud if bars really used to be like that and how they were sad never to have experienced that.
I did have a strong wave of nostalgia while watching the video. It reminded me of several bars I used to go to in my 20s that had extraordinary atmospheres, literally and figuratively. I remembered wondering back then how bars would change when cigarette bans started to be announced. I don't exactly miss cigarette smoke in bars, but something ineffable that I enjoyed disappeared with the smoke.
For those of you who spent a lot of time in NYC, did any of you frequent the Corner Bar in the Village? That was one of my haunts. It had a true piano man by the name of Lance Hayward. It was a sad day when I heard he had passed.
Charli XCX who never learned Roman numerals properly is back? So is this Brat Summer II? Are Kamala and Tim coming back to help us celebrate it? Couldn't we all use a little joy?
In his last years, Kerouac wasn't socializing much, but was drinking a lot. By that point, he probably was an alcoholic.
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