Wear Me This: The death of the cigarette doesn’t mean nicotine and fashion have called it quits

Every girl at some point or another dreams of being Carrie Bradshaw: Life in the United States’s most happening city, a man at every corner, endless shopping trips somehow financed by an inconsequential weekly column that never seems to require any writing.

Through it all, Carrie’s image is constantly punctuated by cinematic cigarette drags, which — like those of countless other media figures ranging from “Grease”’s Danny Zuko to “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” Holly Golightly — was meant to add to her charm and mystique.

From the very beginning of its dominion, the cigarette has been used as a fashion accessory and weapon of allure, and this romanticization has been vital to its grasp on people. Yet, in America today, the cigarette seems to be a dying trend, a dusty artifact of the 20th century that lives on in shady street corners and public ashtrays. This decline is due to the direct governmental and independent efforts to dissuade cigarette use through taxation and advertising bans and mitigate the plague of health problems they have caused.

Though the endless anti-smoking campaigns preceding Bollywood movies and YouTube videos have made this generation view cigarettes as thinly-veiled cancer tubes rather than sexy status symbols, nicotine continues to have an important place in American culture and fashion. No matter which location saturated with under-30-year-olds you go to — I recommend the entrance to Questrom — it’s more than obvious from the intermittent clouds of fruity smoke that the e-cigarette has joined claw clips and baguette bags as a standard fashion accessory.

In a way, this trend makes sense. All the varieties of vapes come in enticing flavors, they’re inconspicuously easy to use, and puff bars — probably the most common ones I’ve seen — come in a bunch of cute colors that are disposable too. They’re easy to pull out indoors as they smell less pungent.

Needless to say, vapes have become as normalized as cigarettes once were, and though they might not hold as much weight in pop culture as cigarettes did, they have become status symbols and aesthetic devices all the same. And why wouldn’t they? The IQOS Heets Dubai is so good. With the number of smoke shops around, customizing your next nicotine hit is as easy as choosing a string bikini off of Shein.

Between the sleek, colorful designs and constant advertising as a safer option to smoking cigarettes, the realities of vapes have been downplayed. And I know people do worse things that are just as normalized as taking a few hits of nicotine. But drinking or taking drugs haven’t assumed as important of a role in fashion and aesthetics as puff bars and JUULS have.

These devices aren’t as innocent as their branding and packaging make them seem, either. After all, they still contain nicotine, which, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, is classified as “a highly addictive substance.” And beyond nicotine, e-cigarettes contain diacetyl — a toxic chemical associated with lung disease, benzene, a compound commonly found in car exhaust and heavy metals including tin, lead and nickel.

The most surprising fact in all this is that most e-cig users are largely unaware of these harmful ingredients. In the case of JUUL, 63% of its users did not know the device always contains nicotine.

I don’t intend to preach about what to put into your body — I, for one, am certainly not made up of 100% Whole Foods and healthy habits. It just seems that much hasn’t changed between the romanticization of cigarettes and the popularity of vapes. Even though the former is regarded as dirty and dangerous and the latter is regarded as healthier, both cause harmful effects.

What is different now is we have a lot more information. Not to mention a pantheon of celebrities who died from smoking, the George Harrisons and Babe Ruths, that are stark reminders of the dangers of smoking.

So please, let’s look past deliberate branding and attractive advertising to consider whether the cigarette’s new spawn really should continue nicotine’s reign over what’s fashionable.