Cigarette Nostalgia, Loneliness, and Mapping the Clitoris
Wide topic variety this week.
When I walked into the 7/11 attached to the Courtyard Marriott in NoMa to buy a pack of smokes, a Drake song popped into my head. Weird, I know. I’m not a fan, but these few lines from Blue Tint spoke to the situation.
Look who I’m fuckin’ again
I had her on ice but then
I watched the ice get thin
Now, does she sink or swim?
I was smoking Marlboros again. I did have them on ice for a bit. The ice was thinning out because I was stressed and considering ending my 10 years of being smoke-free. I decidedly sank when I lit one.
Corny, but fitting.
I’d been thinking for a few weeks about our current wave of cigarette nostalgia and, before I gave in, I sent a pitch about my urge to smoke again off to Allure. I’ve written about what cigarettes do to our brains from an addiction standpoint in the past. This time, I was interested in how living in a country with virtually no infrastructure to mitigate stress was fueling the resurgence.
Allure took it. Here’s an excerpt for ya, then I encourage you to read the piece in full on their website.
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I’m a Health Reporter, and I’m Considering Smoking Again
I do everything a reasonable person is supposed to do.
I meditate. I do breathwork. I show up at my weekly therapy appointments, even when I would rather sleep in. I take the SSRIs that my therapist, my former primary care physician, and I all agree I should take. I work out several days a week. I go for a walk every evening before dinner. And, despite applying for hundreds of jobs, I’ve been out of work for a year. The stress of being without a stable income and benefits has affected my well-being on a cellular level, and the protocols that are supposed to work do not—even though, by every measure of wellness culture, I am taking my own care seriously. Before I left D.C. to move in with friends in North Carolina, I spent every day on edge, wondering when someone would unlock the door and force me and my possessions out onto the curb.
I do everything a reasonable person is supposed to do. And now, for the first time in a decade, I want a cigarette. To get even more specific, I would kill for a Marlboro 27.
Cigarettes are the leading cause of preventable deaths in the U.S. While the long-term health effects of the occasional cig are tricky to track, we do know smoking even just one causes immediate damage to the body, and, of course, you run the risk of developing a really nasty habit. Despite this, they are having a cultural resurgence, and many writers have spent the last few months parsing out why. In The Cut, Xochitl Gonzalez made a melancholy case for smoking as a rebellion against the productivity-poisoned way we live now, a way of stepping outside our optimized matrix and engaging with another person for the length of a cigarette. In Allure, Gabriella Onessimo followed the smoking aesthetic into the makeup aisle, rightly clocking that the beauty industry is glamorizing a deadly addiction.
At my peak, I smoked half a pack on a mild day, though most were bad ones where I would have nearly the whole 20. When I quit, the effects were immediately noticeable. Within weeks, my skin was better, my resting heart rate was going down, and I could take deeper breaths. Quitting was one of the few unambiguously good decisions I have ever made about my own health, and I do not regret it. Still, the desire to smoke pops up. Most likely because addiction, even one I had a long time ago, has rewired the neural pathways in my brain a bit, but also there’s the intense stress I find myself under.
A class story lurks beneath this current wave of cigarette nostalgia, too. Why do Americans deal with stress by grabbing a $10 pack of cancer sticks from their local corner store?
Micros
Unfortunately, I read some of the comments on the Allure IG post, and I didn’t realize I needed to tell adults that smoking is bad for them! But, even funnier, in a macabre way, someone suggested drinking instead… Okay, for the hell of it, let’s say substitution worked. I’d be swapping one Group 1 carcinogen with highly addictive properties for another Group 1 carcinogen with highly addictive properties. Goes to show you how people just be talking fr.
The Cut parsed out the tension between loneliness influencers and the parasocial relationships they’re fostering with the followers they’re making feel seen.
The Guardian made a good case against being too hot via face-freezing plastic surgery. Pointing out Margot Robbie in Wuthering Heights reminded me of how awful the film was, and how much of that was due to the actors' unrealistic hotness.
Researchers, for the first time, have mapped the nerves in the clitoris. A healthy future, to me, is one where the clit gets the respect it deserves!! There’s also a joke here, somewhere, about how if it’s so big, how do so many men miss it?
That’s all for this edition. See y’all soon.