Is smoking cool again? Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter and the other stars not afraid to light up

Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter and Lorde have more in common than chart-topping hits. All three have crafted images that include smoking – whether in music videos, lyrics or public appearances. Are they inadvertently setting a risky example for fans?\n\nCarpenter leans over a sink, a cigarette between her fingers, dressed in a corset made entirely of cigarette packs. The photo from a series of Instagram pictures for Interview magazine has more than 2 million likes. In her new music video for the song “Manchild”, the pop singer also casually takes a drag on a cigarette stuck between a fork.\nPlaying with cigarettes seems to be popular again in pop culture at the moment. British singer Charli XCX also likes to pose as a smoker. In 2024, she launched the eponymous “Brat Summer” with her album Brat. In a BBC interview, she said that all you really need to be “Brat” is a top without a bra, a lighter and, of course, a pack of smokes.\nSinger Lorde describes an ex-relationship in her song “What Was That” as the “best cigarette of my life”. Is smoking – despite the known health risks – becoming cool again?\n\nPop music culture and media researcher, Christoph Jacke, says he is acutely aware that cigarettes are increasingly appearing among female pop music superstars in particular. “Of course, this may also have something to do with the fact that there seem to be more of them.” However, he characterises the cigarette itself as a “cultural constant” in pop music.\nIt has never really gone away and has therefore not made a massive comeback, says Jacke, who is the deputy managing director of C:pop, a research centre for popular music and creative industries at the University of Paderborn in Germany. “Rather, it was sometimes more visible and sometimes less visible in various trend waves,” he notes.\nAccording to Jacke, smoking itself and the cigarette are part of the star image for many artists. “They are also part of singers’ lyrics and provide iconic images for lifestyle staging on or off stage.”\n\nOf course, these public self-presentations do not automatically mean that the stars actually smoke off stage.\nThey are particularly noticeable on social media. In 2024, Charli XCX was given a bouquet of cigarettes for her birthday, which she posted on Instagram.\nThe Instagram account Cigfluencers, which has more than 81,000 followers, regularly publishes photos of celebrities smoking – such as actress Natalie Portman on a film set. The operator of the profile, Jared Oviatt, told The New York Times that he had recently noticed that there was more material to post.\nSuch productions go back further in pop culture history, says Jacke. Even singers such as Patti Smith, 78, and the late 1960s icon Marianne Faithfull were photographed while smoking.\n“If you look at the old pictures of Patti Smith and Marianne Faithfull, for example, they are two strong female pop music stars – perhaps in very poor female company at the time.”\n\nThat has changed a lot now. “I think that the use of the cigarette today is still a reference to this empowerment, a kind of self-empowerment, as weird as it sounds, ‘we can do it too’ and ‘we know it’s not healthy’.”\nFor decades, awareness campaigns, science and politics have worked to banish tobacco to the past.\nTruth Initiative, a US non-profit health organisation, points to research that shows that “exposure to tobacco content on social media doubles the odds of tobacco use among young people compared to those who are not exposed”.\nThe World Health Organization (WHO) warns that the tobacco industry often enlists celebrities and influencers to promote smoking to young people, frequently without disclosure, portraying it as stylish and harmless.\nTobacco kills nearly 6 million of its users each year, according to the WHO. This means that the industry must recruit new users to replace those who die or quit, the WHO states.\n\nTo achieve this goal, it says, tobacco companies spend tens of billions of US dollars each year on advertising, promotion and sponsorship to sell their products.\nGlobally, 78 per cent of students aged 13 to 15 report regular exposure to tobacco marketing, with women and girls also heavily targeted, according to the WHO.\n