Early this spring, at the height of conclave mania, an old photo made the rounds on social media: two cardinals lighting up. Dressed in black cassocks and red zucchettos, they held their cigarettes loosely between their lips. One, hands cupped, extended a lighter to the other, who gazed down through dark aviator glasses at an old-school flip phone.
“There’s a reason Hollywood always uses Catholicism to represent Christianity,” someone wrote on X. “Two Cardinals in full regalia ripping heaters, the choice is obvious.” Nearly 5,000 X users liked the post.
We know that smoking is bad for us — decades of government P.S.A.s and packaging festooned with evermore graphic warnings have seen to that. And on a broad scale, smoking as a pastime is in steep decline. As of 2024, the cigarette-smoking rate was at an 80-year low. But romanticization of the cigarette has persisted — and in recent years, has grown.
Cigarettes feature prominently in “Materialists,” one of the summer’s most talked-about movies; they are the accessory of choice for Gen Z icons like Paul Mescal and Charli XCX. The Times itself recently described the bowls of cigarettes reportedly set out at Mary Kate Olsen’s wedding in 2015 as “subversive, very French,” in a tone that couldn’t help conveying more than a hint of approval.
The mere idea of cigarettes is being adopted to zhuzh up tamer indulgences. Diet Coke has been jokingly renamed the “fridge cigarette”; on TikTok, a viral video of a can being cracked open in the sun is captioned “time for a crispy ciggy in the summer.” “Wow, that’s so real,” one of the more than 1,200 commenters responded. “It just takes the edge off.”
In her 2024 book “The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World,” Christine Rosen (my colleague at the American Enterprise Institute) describes how our contact with the physical has receded as our lives have become increasingly mediated by technology. “It has transformed many human experiences not by banning them, but by making certain kinds of embodied experiences such as face-to-face communication and other unmediated pleasures less and less relevant to daily life.” Heartfelt conversations take place through text messages; we stream church services to our living rooms. This is not a good thing. “Many of these experiences are what, historically, have helped us form and nurture a shared reality as human beings.”
Younger generations are perhaps the most affected by this transformation, having come of age in an almost entirely digital world. During the Covid pandemic, formative experiences took place at a remove; today even more of life happens online. An epidemic of loneliness and a rise in mental health problems has crested in tandem with the increase in time spent on mediated platforms.
It’s not hard to imagine, then, that smoking might serve as an antidote — or at the very least, a refutation of an existence lived at a remove from the real.
Cigarettes are unavoidably analog; smoking is an embodied task. The handling of a cellophane-wrapped pack, the flick of a lighter — or better yet, the strike of a match — the deliberate draw and release of breath and the heady nicotine buzz all engage the senses in a way that can’t be replicated on a screen. Many smokers describe the ritual of lighting up, the tangibleness of the particular task. And unlike a bulbous, plasticy vape, they seem real; not just another thing to plug in.
Plus, in a time of persistent distance between individuals, cigarettes are often social — a connective experience. Most of those paparazzi shots of celebrities smoking involve them circling up with friends; they’re “outside,” in the Eric Adams sense. “The party cig is so back,” a Gen Z acquaintance told me, referring to the idea of stepping out from a function to huddle and chat, the possible flirtation inherent in bumming one off someone else — a much more sensual experience than swiping on an app.
And they are symbolic. Smoking has always signaled a certain devil-may-care mood; in our nihilistic times, haunted by fears of apocalypse — A.I., climate, institutional, other — it’s a celebration of being alive by way of chipping away at it, treating the body casually in service of a life fully enjoyed. A pack of cigarettes is the opposite of an Oura ring or any of the other tech brands of bodily surveillance that seek to become the new norm.
Against all of this, though, is the incontrovertible fact that cigarettes can kill you. Lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema are certainly less aesthetically pleasing than an artfully arranged spread of loosies and lighters at a fashion industry party. Even Europe, that smoke-wreathed bastion of cool, is moving farther away from the cigarette: France just banned them in parks and beaches in an effort to protect children; the fashion capital Milan broadly banned them in public places to promote clean air.
I don’t smoke. In fact, for the record, I would warn against it. But I do approve of giving in to the allure of the analog and of attempts, even if misguided, to live a more embodied life. There are non-tobacco alternatives: a walk outside without AirPods in. A cheeky drink shared with a friend or lover. Discarding the pings of a wellness app to stay out late or lie languidly in the sun.
Still, as our life experience continues to decay, ripping a heater may become more compelling than ever.
Christine Emba is the author of “Rethinking Sex: A Provocation,” a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing Opinion writer.
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