What do Beyoncé, Sean Penn, Alexa Chung and 19-year-old American rapper Nettspend have in common? They’re all “cigfluencers”, says Jared Oviatt, the 27-year-old founder of the Cigfluencers Instagram page. Oviatt launched the channel in 2021 with mostly archive photographs of models and actors smoking; today his account is home to more than 500 images, most of them new shots, and 100,000 followers.
“It’s hard to define a cigfluencer,” says Oviatt, whose feed includes pictures of Carrie Coon, Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve. “But they have to love smoking non-performatively. You can tell the difference.”
Connor Storrie with a cigarette outside the Tiffany & Co Blue Book event in New York, 2026 © Backgrid
Gabbriette Bechtel holds a cigarette at Paris Fashion Week in 2023 © Christian Vierig/Getty Images
Such an earnest love of smoking would have caused uproar only a few years ago. After decades of campaigning about their health risks – at least one in two long-term smokers will die from their habit – cigarettes were mostly removed from screens and magazines in the early 2000s. Cameron Diaz, who was accosted by anti-smoking groups, quit entirely. Fox News declared that it could look past Miley Cyrus’s pole dancing, but not her “bad news” smoking habit.
