Blogs, Fashion, And The Resurgent Glamour Of Smoking

Celia smoking cigarette Flickr malias

Jennine of The Coveted is calling on fashion and street blogs to stop posting “images of cool, chic people standing around casually smoking.” Such images, she argues, promote a seductively glamorous image of a gross and dangerous habit. “Even...people who hate smoking in real life, get a voyeuristic joy out of these cool people who are immune to health hazards and smelly breath.”

“Would it be too much to ask to put out the cigarette for a moment, for the sake of social responsibility?” she asks.

She’s not the first to make that argument. Her prime target, The Sartorialist, has long drawn criticism for showing so many street-fashion icons with lit cigarettes. (Examples here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) The topic has become something of a joke among commenters, and this post included a disclaimer declaring that the image isn’t supposed to celebrate smoking.

St Tropez smoker black leather FaceMePLS Flickr

The problem, of course, is that these cool, chic people do smoke, particularly on the street. (The New Yorkers in these photos often look like they’re on the street precisely because they’re smokers fleeing no-smoking buildings.) But, Jennine correctly notes, such photos are always selective. Why not edit out the cigarettes? In effect, she’s arguing that fashion blogs should further glamorize their subjects by deleting their nasty habits.

In truth, these blog photos rarely glamorize smoking. Unlike images like this, this, or this, they don't emphasize the smoking. It is unimportant to the image and the emotions it evokes. Rather, these photos normalize smoking, by depicting cigarettes as no more unusual or problematic than cell phones. You have to care about cigarettes to imbibe any message about them.

Of course, that normalization is something of a change from the treatment of cigarettes in my youth, when smoking was generally viewed as a low-class habit for losers. The unrelenting campaign against it has given smoking new cachet, making it an emblem of “heroic, sexy social outlaws,” as one observer put it in British Vogue.

Still, the main pro-cigarette bias on fashion blogs isn’t overt. It’s a side effect of the photographic medium. The still image removes the smoker from time and, thus, from the long-term consequences of the smoking. In this way, the photos are indeed glamorous, offering escape into a perfect, and illusory, moment beyond entropy, age, decay, or death.

[Celia enjoying a cigarette by Flickr user Malias, St. Tropez smoker by Flickr user FaceMePLS, both used under Creative Commons license.]

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Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 30, 2009 in Fashion, Escape, Everyday Glamour, Weblogs, Smoking