The darling of the music industry, Dua Lipa, posted a sultry photo of herself in Deia, Mallorca, this week, sitting on the pavement in a sheer black lace dress – with a cigarette. She shared it to her 87.9 million Instagram followers.
“My lucky 22 that follows me everywhere,” she captioned the post, referring to the building behind her, with the number 22 on its door.
However, her fans – including me – have been far more focused on the cigarette between her fingers. One wrote: “Holiday ciggies don’t count.” Another said: “Don’t quit. Enjoy yourself. A cheeky cig every now and again is good for the soul. Nothing better than smoking a dart on the medieval streets of an old European city in summertime.”
But others showed concern, with a simple “don’t smoke” and “Please consider the health risks as I’m sure you know them. I lost my mother to cancer due to heavy smoking for years.”
The pop star has tried to give up smoking in the past, but has always relapsed. Last year, she formally announced during an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers that she’d kicked the habit for her Future Nostalgia Tour in 2022 – and had stuck to it.
But by August of the same year, it seemed she’d taken it up again, when she shared a photograph in which she was clutching a box of Malboro Gold. And in January this year, paparazzi photos emerged of her newly engaged with her fiance Callum Turner in Paris, smoking and cuddling by the Eiffel Tower.
Dua Lipa’s latest post could raise alarm bells that she’s a “cigfluencer” like Beyonce, who lit up a fag on stage in Paris during her Cowboy Carter Tour in June; or Sabrina Carpenter, who used a fork as a cigarette in the music video for her latest single, Manchild.
Timothée Chalamet was caught on camera having a cheeky fag at the Beyoncé concert in Los Angeles in 2023 – and Charli XCX, whose 2024 album Brat inspired the “brat summer” trend, described being “brat” as “a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra”.
It comes as worrying statistics show that after years of decline, smoking is on the rise again for the first time since 2006, according to academics at University College London. Their study, published in the journal Addiction earlier this year, found that smoking increased 10 per cent in southern England between 2020 and 2024 – and there are now an estimated 7.5 million adults in the UK who smoke.
So, does Dua Lipa really want to give up – or is she hopelessly addicted to the idea that smoking makes her look “cool”?
I think I know where she’s at. It’s called denial. But here’s how to do it: I gave up smoking 40 cigarettes a day in 15 minutes.
I read The Easy Way to Stop Smoking by Alan Carr while I continued to smoke heavily, as instructed in the book, until I had finished it.
It was drilled into me that there is no rational reason why I smoke. There was nothing to give up, as smoking gave me nothing. It was an illusion that smoking was a stress reliever, or a prop. It was a trap. I mustn’t use nicotine substitutes – it will only prolong the pang. Every time you smoke, it’s just feeding the “nicotine monster”. It percolated through my mind. The main takeaway was that to quit smoking wasn’t hard.
I carried on smoking two packets a day, but my mind had reset. Then I walked into a hypnotherapist’s office in Harley Street for a 15-minute appointment, and never smoked again. That was more than 15 years ago.
I didn’t even believe I’d been hypnotised, as the therapist counted me down from 10 into a relaxed state. It was only as I got up to leave, disappointed with the session, that I clocked something unusual had happened – the water in my glass spilled all over the floor because I was holding it at a tilt.
When I got home, I still had cravings to smoke – but they were mild. I’d think, oh, I fancy a cigarette. But I couldn’t be bothered to go and buy them. I had to be vigilant, though the cravings became weaker and weaker every day. I got through my first week as a non-smoker and I felt jubilant. It was the best £200 (for 15 minutes) I’d ever spent.
But then I felt murderous – as if all the years of smoking had pushed down my emotions. I was consumed by seething resentment about different people and situations that I thought I’d let go of. Luckily, I got over that phase – and was liberated.
As I learnt in Carr’s book, whenever I think about smoking, I have to think, yippee! I’m a non-smoker! And it still makes me happy to this day.
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