Is wellness culture dead? Why celebrities are returning to cigarettes and alcohol

A discernible vibe shift is afoot. Kylie Jenner hasn’t been seen without a full glass of wine in her hand since the Jeff Bezos-Lauren Sanchez wedding in Venice last month. Hailey Bieber has been making the case for the martini glass as an accessory all year, including on the Met Gala red carpet. Dua Lipa is sharing sultry snaps to Instagram of her smoking while on holiday in Europe, while Bella Hadid has been spotted smoking again, too. Kate Moss was papped stumbling into the Ritz in Paris on her 50th birthday, months before her wellness brand Cosmoss entered voluntary liquidation. Lola Young’s song Messy with the lyrics, “Okay, so yeah, I smoke like a chimney / I'm not skinny, and I pull a Britney every other week,” was the first UK number one from a British female solo artist since 2017. Charli XCX was spotted enjoying a celebratory post-wedding cigarette in East London. Even the Duchess of Sussex has pivoted from jam to rosé. So does all this mean that the era of wellness posturing and being well-behaved are, well, over?

“I guess in popular culture we’ve entered another euphoric era where drinking and smoking has once again become more prevalent,” says Dean Piper, former celebrity journalist and PR founder. “But even some of the big smoking endorsements have shocked me. The likes of Beyoncé and Madonna smoking on their socials and on stage. Who’d have thought it?”

“There’s definitely a shift that I think started with Charli XCX and Brat,” shares Grace O’Neill, co-host of pop culture podcast After Work Drinks. “I notice it in the culture, celebrities are smoking and drinking again, and there's a kind of general lack of polish in the way celebrities are dressing and presenting themselves. The girls who feel cool right now are all a little bit looser and less studied: Gabriette, Devon Lee Carlson, and Romy Mars. I would say this extends to podcasting, too. My podcast, After Work Drinks, falls very much into the vibe shift. My co-host Isabelle Truman and I have no theme music, no intro, we just speak chaotically for 90 minutes a week about whatever takes our fancy, and we have developed quite a cult listenership with that approach.”

In many ways, it feels jarring to see polished starlets like Jenner, Bieber and Hadid indulging in a little naughty behaviour. After all, each of them came of age and into the spotlight at a time when the proliferation of camera phones and popularisation of social media meant that an A-lister’s every move was documented by the masses. “When social media and iPhones became prolific around 2012-ish, celebrities started totally transforming their public behaviour out of fear of being secretly filmed in compromising positions,” explains O’Neill. “I remember as an editor in 2015-2017 how ‘together’ social media celebrities like Kendall Jenner, Gigi Hadid, and Hailey Bieber were. They would leave a club at 3:00 am with perfect hair and make-up: it was a far cry from the pictures of Kate Moss coming out of Annabel’s in the 2000s.”

The rise of photography app Instagram in particular ushered in an obsession with the perfectly curated life, with celebrities and influencers keen to show their followers that they had the most aspirational existence of all – something which translated to brand deals and therefore both cultural cachet and financial success. “It was an era of hyper optimisation – ‘clean’ eating, wellness culture, morning routines, matcha lattes, Reformer Pilates, and there was a fetishisation of a healthy lifestyle that was not conducive with drinking, smoking, or partying,” explains O’Neill. “I think it’s the nature of the trend cycle that we’ve recently hit the peak of that culture and now find it quite boring and prescriptive.”

Indeed, there were already rumblings before Charli and the Brat movement of last summer that people were growing fatigued with the goody-two-shoes of it all. There’s a theory that trends cycle back round every 20 years, with the fashions of the 2000s and early 2010 now enjoying a renaissance, including what became known as ‘indie sleaze.’ It’s an aesthetic that is characterised by a certain messiness, the putting together of looks based on random thrifted pieces, topped with an undeniable rock and roll attitude. In many ways, it is the complete antithesis of the clean girl trend, typified by a Molly Mae top knot, Rhode-glazed skin and Pilates-honed abs.

“I think the impact of the early era of social media was that it felt like culture turned into a single beige-toned blob, everyone was wearing a white T-shirt, a blazer, and a gold hoop earring, hair scraped into a ponytail, wearing ‘no make-up make-up’,” says O’Neill. “There’s a return to individualism that I think is really positive for young women, it’s a kind of bursting of the dam where individual style, taste, and uniqueness is cool again – but of course that was always cool.”

A decade ago, a curated flat-lay or artfully crafted caption could feel spur of the moment and real. There was no reason to assume that it wasn’t. But in the years since, we’ve become far more aware of the staged nature of social media, and especially when it comes to celebrities. This also extends to how much we trust that the image they present to the world is true or not: scandals like fake cancer-sufferer Belle Gibson, the Justin Baldoni-Blake Lively lawsuit and Matilda Djerf’s fake body-inclusivity have all shed a light on how much artificiality goes into creating a celebrity these days. Today, there’s a more genuine thirst for what Gen Z loves to dub ‘authenticity’.

“I think we are living in a day and age where the general public knows a lot more and is far more clued up by how the celebrity world actually works,” agrees Piper. “And the fact that people can connect with their favourite celebrities directly on social media means they feel more attached than ever to their favourite names. They don’t want fake people. They want a Rihanna who says it how it is or a Lily Allen who lays her cards on the table with her podcast, Miss Me. They also love the idea of celebrities being just like us and having a drink, having hangovers and having a cheeky fag.”

And if any further evidence was needed that the culture is going through a massive vibe shift right now, it’s this; The so-called sober generation has started drinking. A recent survey into alcohol consumption across generations found that there has been a marked and sudden drop in the number of Gen Zers who abstain from drinking. 73 per cent of the once-sober generation now admit to having had alcohol in the past year, compared to 66 per cent two years ago – the largest uptick across any age group.

Commentators have posited that the shift is due to the relaxing of the cost of living crisis, with more economic spending power, but it’s undeniable that the culture at large is also having an effect. “It’s no coincidence that the backlash [against wellness] has coincided with the conservatives co-opting the health/wellness movement with RFK Jr and Make America Healthy Again,” adds O’Neill. “Nothing could make a trend less cool than being Trump adjacent.”

All images: Getty Images

This article originally appeared on harpersbazaar.com/uk


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