When I was a teenager at school, it was only the cool girls who smoked. They would go behind the huts that were built on the playground that were never removed nor replaced with sturdier structures despite always being referred to as ‘temporary’. If you were not cool, you knew not to go behind them. There was a general fear that if you did, they would think you would snitch and beat you up in apprehension. Back then everyone smoked straight cigarettes, Marlboro golds or reds that were £8.40 per pack with orange dipped heads. I remember one cool girl in my class who smoked so much that when it was Secret Santa, her Santa brought her a rectangle box of Maltesers. Only I looked over her shoulder and saw that the chocolates had been removed in a kind of surgical ectomy and replaced with two packs of cigarettes whose plastic film caught the light as she opened it.

This was around the time when we were all being told by teachers that smoking was not cool and that it would kill you. It was hard to take the message seriously when we’d find those same teachers next to the bins after school cupping their hands, attempting to shield their cigarettes from the wind. Although they were wrong about smoking not being cool (smoking is undeniably cool), they were right about it killing you. ASH (Action for Smoking and Health) reported statistics after a study in October 2023 that showed that lifelong smokers are more than 50% likely to die early, losing on average about 10 years of their life. That smoking accounts for 74,600 deaths a year in England and;

‘causes lung cancer, respiratory disease, and heart disease as well as numerous cancers in other organs including the lip, mouth, throat, bladder, kidney, stomach, liver and cervix’.

So why then, is it still so freaking cool?

Perhaps it’s the fact that it will kill you, that it’s so obviously detrimental to your health that makes it cool. Smoking, therefore, is a symbol of someone’s lackluster for life, their general disregard for their own safety, their prioritisation of enjoyment now rather than securing future enjoyment alive later. ASH’s study report also shows that since 1990, there has been a steady increase in the number of smokers using hand-rolled cigarettes. These days, I barely ever see anyone smoking straights. Instead, people fumble around patting down their bodies for various lumps in their pockets looking for their filters, their papers, and their crinkled bag of tobacco before lovingly rolling it all together into a crisp cylinder. People don’t smoke anymore, they ‘go out for a cig’ and then stand in whatever rain, storm, wind, or sunshine puffing out clouds of smoke and taking long audible breaths in and out. If I see someone and think they’re hot, their hotness increases by 10% if they start smoking. If they roll their own, running their tongue down the long edge of the paper, their hotness increases by 20%. If they chain smoke, it loses its effect; that’s just a genuine problem. I’m not a good smoker, my cigarettes always go out and then I have to ask for the lighter back and it’s embarrassing. I don’t know why they go out because once I googled ‘how to smoke a cigarette’ and I always follow the instructions. It’s as if the cigarette itself is saying ‘no, you’re not cool enough to smoke me’, and snuffs itself out to preserve its own image.

Back in the 1950s/60s, the advertising around cigarettes was that it was cool, hip, glamorous and, can you believe it, healthy. If you see these two commercials that were shown on TV around the time you’ll understand what I mean.

Belair Commercial, c. 1960

Camel Cigarette Commercial, c. 1950

The first one is for Belair cigarettes and shows a group of young people on a boat singing about Belair cigarettes, the hook being ‘Menthol fresh Belair’. Later the ad uses words like ‘clean’, and ‘refreshing’, and repetitively uses the phrase ‘a breath of fresh air’. The second is for Camel cigarettes where they used three, I assume, famous baseball players who talk about the amazing taste and how smooth the cigarettes are. While it’s hard not to be put off by the men’s awkward performances, it’s telling that they used athletes to promote the product. It wasn’t until around 1964 when we all found out that cigarettes are bad for you and cause cancer but even then, how do you erase years of advertising and widespread messaging around the glamour, fun, and enjoyment of cigarettes? 

Another great example of the glamorization of smoking is through art and fiction. Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t be Sherlock Holmes without his tobacco pipe. Smoking for Sherlock Holmes is a symbol of his thoughtfulness, his imperfection, and his maleness. Smoking a pipe was (and arguably still is) predominantly seen as a male thing to do. At first smoking of any kind was gatekept for men, and only after the First World War did cigarette companies shift their advertising to show smoking as healthy, hip, and social for men, and a glamorous, luxurious activity for women.

My belief that smoking is cool must have some roots in the branding and imagery of the habit. I know it’s not like I see these commercials daily or read Sherlock Holmes every night before bed but something must seep down from generation to generation – the way we talk about it, the way it’s packaged, who you see doing it. Smoking is an infamous activity when you’re younger. You’re always told not to do it, which only makes you want to do it more. For many people, smoking is their first act of rebellion. How can rebellion not be cool? Smoking is obviously cooler than vaping. Smoking has a kind of vintage, a type of retro prestige that a plastic pink elf bar is in complete antithesis of. When I was younger I was always told smoking was lame, but it’s not. It’s cool. It will kill you but it is cool. I don’t make the rules. If anyone could teach me how to smoke better please leave tips in the comments; I think a burning cigarette balanced elegantly between my two fingers would help me look more mysterious. 

I did have a pastry this week but it doesn’t seem very relevant to this blog – when does it ever?

Good bye for now.

Image courtesy of The British Library.

Smoking-Statistics-Fact-Sheet.pdf (ash.org.uk) ASH fact sheet

Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine The Internet Archive

From the Archive: The Tobacco Industry and Advertising: Women Smoking in Interwar Britain | British Online Archives (microform.digital) An interesting article about the gendered advertising of the tobacco industry.