Why Cigarettes Are Turning People On Again, According to Sex Therapists
· Vice
Smoking is expensive, inconvenient, terrible for you, and now something you usually have to walk half a block away from everyone else to do. Naturally, some people find it incredibly hot. And lately, there seem to be more of them.
According to Clips4Sale, smoking fetish content is up 58% this year, and smoking is now the sixth most searched term on the platform in the UK. Cigarettes have also been creeping back into pop culture. Charli XCX has been dubbed a “cigfluencer.” Dua Lipa reportedly had bowls of cigarettes at her wedding after-party. Margot Robbie was photographed smoking on the set of the Ocean’s Eleven prequel, and people online reacted exactly as people online do when Margot Robbie does almost anything.
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There’s some psychology behind why something we’ve spent years being told is terrible for us can become sexually appealing.
Smoking Is Becoming a Popular Fetish, and Psychology Might Explain Why
Sex therapist Jack Morin called it the “erotic equation”: attraction plus obstacles equals excitement. The idea is that putting rules, danger, or prohibition around something can make an existing attraction stronger. A 2023 Psychology Today piece also notes that taboo is a common ingredient in sexual fantasy. Smoking comes preloaded with it.
Then there’s the actual act of smoking. The slow drag. The exhale. The fact that nobody has ever smoked a cigarette while looking particularly rushed.
Psychosexual therapist Becky Crepsley-Fox told Metro that knowing smoking is bad for us can add to the attraction because doing something you’re not supposed to do can feel rebellious. She compared that forbidden quality with sex.
Online, people are much less academic about it. “100% yes, hot as f**k,” one Reddit user wrote. Another called smoking “super attractive and sexy” because it made a woman look “badass and cool.” Others want absolutely nothing to do with it, citing the smell and the very obvious health consequences.
There’s also a difference between thinking smoking is hot and having a smoking fetish. People use “fetish” pretty loosely online, and an interest doesn’t have to become necessary for arousal before it can play a strong role in someone’s sex life. For some people, the cigarette is an extra. For others, it can become much more central to what turns them on.
The brain is very good at making associations, including some weird ones. If something keeps getting paired with arousal, the connection can hang around. The Psychology Today piece points to conditioning as one reason something gross or forbidden can become sexually exciting.
Smoking has had decades to supply the imagery. Movie stars leaning against doorways. Bad boys, femme fatales, rock stars, people making questionable decisions in expensive coats. Public health campaigns changed what we know about cigarettes. The image never really got the memo.
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