Kylie Jenner has lit a cigarette on the cover of Vanity Fair and in a music video with Charli XCX. Hailey Bieber posed with one in a recent Interview Magazine shoot. Sabrina Carpenter and Dakota Johnson have leaned into similar imagery in their own work.
Cigarettes Return to Pop Culture
For most of the last two decades, celebrity smoking photos read as tabloid gossip rather than fashion statements.
Mariah Wellman, a communication professor at Michigan State University who studies wellness culture, told Yahoo the shift reflects a broader move away from “clean girl” wellness branding toward a moodier, more rebellious aesthetic shaped by Y2K nostalgia and what she called “this hedonistic, slightly rebellious, even nihilist culture.”
Wellman also pointed to a less obvious factor: nicotine’s use as an appetite suppressant amid the current cultural emphasis on thinness, which she said is colliding with indie sleaze fashion trends and general burnout from years of self-optimization content.
Why Cigarette Imagery Still Shapes Behavior
Grace Kong, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine who studies youth tobacco prevention, said the imagery matters regardless of whether it reflects an actual rise in smoking.
Exposure to glamorized smoking images can shift how people perceive the risk and desirability of cigarettes, and normalized depictions from high-profile figures can make experimentation more likely among young people who have little firsthand memory of aggressive anti-smoking campaigns or the health toll of previous smoking generations.
That distance matters. A Duke University study found the share of Americans who viewed smoking as a serious health risk declined between 2006 and 2015, even as actual smoking rates kept falling.
Researchers have also tracked a resurgence of tobacco imagery in movies in recent years, a trend that reaches a wide audience of younger viewers.
Nicotine Addiction Remains a Serious Health Risk
The imagery trend has emerged even as cigarette use among U.S. adults has never been lower. New data published in NEJM Evidence found the adult smoking rate fell below 10 percent in 2024, the lowest level ever recorded, capping decades of steady decline driven by public health campaigns, pricing, and shifting social norms.
That is exactly what makes the current wave of glamorized imagery notable to researchers: normalized depictions of smoking from high-profile figures have the potential to chip away at the perception of risk that helped drive the decline in the first place.
This is particularly the case among young people who did not live through the decades of anti-smoking messaging that shaped that trend.
Public health researchers also point to vaping as a factor that may make the jump to traditional cigarettes easier for younger people already familiar with nicotine delivery devices, according to CDC youth tobacco data. It’s arguable that teen vaping is reversing smoking progress.
What This Means for Treatment Seekers
For someone already dependent on nicotine, cultural imagery is background noise compared to the physical and psychological grip of the addiction itself. Nicotine dependence is treatable, and options range from nicotine replacement therapy to prescription medications to behavioral counseling, often used together for the best results.
Willpower alone rarely works when it comes to quitting smoking. A return of cigarettes to pop culture does not change the clinical reality that structured support improves the odds of quitting for good.
Exploring Treatment Options
Anyone concerned about their own smoking, or a loved one’s, does not need to wait for a crisis to ask for help. A conversation with a doctor about nicotine replacement options, prescription cessation medications like varenicline, or a structured quit plan can make a real difference.
Rehab.com’s directory can help connect people with treatment providers who specialize in nicotine addiction and tobacco cessation support. Call
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