It’s more than just a habit, it’s an aesthetic
From the Sheer Unadulterated Stupidity Files: Hay kidz smoaking iz bakk.
…singers, actors and influencers seem to be bringing smoking back into vogue – quite literally, with cigarettes making a return as on the New York Fashion Week runways earlier this year as accessories.
So, why are cigarettes being glamorised again?
Lucy, a 20-year-old university student, says she took up smoking recently because “it’s just what everyone does”. Almost all her friends also smoke and she says it’s more than just a habit, it’s an aesthetic.
“I definitely think everyone trying to be brat has influenced people to start smoking because Charli herself says you have to have a pack of cigs if you really want to embody the vibe.”
Hunh hunh hunh yeah and if Charli herself takes a nap in the middle of a freeway you should do that too, right? Embody the vibe, maaaaan.
Journalist Olivia Petter says the cigarette has become a symbol that represents our nostalgia towards a bygone era of carefreeness, frivolity and hedonism and it’s making an comeback in pop culture.
You what now? Setting a dried plant on fire and putting it in your mouth is carefreeness, frivolity and hedonism? An addictive poisonous fire stick is luxurious fun?
Jessica, a 26-year-old who works in marketing, says smoking has “become so normalised again”.
“I didn’t know anyone that smoked a few years ago but now it seems like everyone is doing it and you sort of forget how bad it is for you.”
Well, if you’re really really stupid you do.
In the end the BBC admits it’s just bullshitting.
But, overall, the number of young people smoking is declining – official estimates show that fewer than one out of every 10 young adults in the UK smoke cigarettes – a steep drop from a quarter of 18-24-year-olds 12 years ago.
So smoking is making a comeback except that it’s not. Brilliant journalism.
In my lifetime this has changed so much. Once buses, cinemas, pubs, and offices were blue with smoke and the smell was everywhere. Nowadays I look twice when I see someone with a non vape cigarette and they always look furtive.
Today I learnt that ‘brat’ is the Collins Dictionary word of the year and, as with many other perfectly good words that have served us so well for many years, has been given a shiny new definition. Not only does it no longer refer to an unruly, ill-disciplined child, it has transitioned from a noun to an adjective describing a ‘confident, independent and hedonistic attitude’, a shift credited to the same Charli who has apparently single-handedly made smoking trendy. So who is Charli? I hear you ask. Well, that’s something else I learnt today. Charli XCX is the professional name of one Charlotte Emma Aitchison, a nice middle-class British woman, born in Cambridge and and raised in the affluent hamlet of Start Hill, Essex, who has reinvented herself as an edgy performer of mediocre pop music. ‘Brat’ is the title of her latest album, released this year, and the tasteful video to ‘360’, a release from that album, includes a scene of a two women smoking (or vaping, it’s hard to tell) over what appears to be a corpse on a hospital trolley, with one blowing smoke directly into the corpse’s face, whilst Charli sings.
The world needs less of these people – influencers and the easily-influenced alike – and if they wouldn’t mind taking those who are using ‘cringe’ as an adjective along with them then, Hell, let ’em smoke all they want.
I have a nineteen year old cousin who smokes.
Thing is, said cousin isn’t a “conformist” (she still reads J. K. Rowling’s books despite her friends censuring her for continuing to read the Wicked TERF). So I don’t think she’s doing this to fit in with the in-crowd.
I suspect she picked the habit up from her mother, who despite being an exemplary parent in all other matters, smokes constantly in front of her children.
It does make me laugh that the article says today’s teenagers and twentysomethings are taking up smoking to “rebel”.
This is a generation that *panics* when someone uses the term “adult human female”.
This is a generation that bullies a writer (Elizabeth Gilbert) into withdrawing a book that’s set in Russia in the 1900s, because they think that the book is somehow pro-Putin.
This is a generation that has “challenging” books removed from their university courses because the rich little snowflakes are so easily triggered:
https://unherd.com/newsroom/students-dont-need-protecting-from-challenging-books/
“Rebel?” The majority of today’s youth are conformist, philistine and easily offended. Somehow, we’ve raised a generation of Mary Whitehouses.
Laura Nyro and Joe Strummer wouldn’t recognise today’s pampered identartians, who love cigarettes but fear thought and action.
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