Opinion
I’ve never felt more alive than when I’ve been closest to death.
Skydiving or nosediving in an aerobatic plane, drinking champagne like it’s a not a group one carcinogen or eating the rice that’s been left out on the bench for two days. I get the thrill of taking a risk: we all have our vices.
But smoking? Never.
I was lucky enough to have a grandfather who smoked a lot. He also had a condition called viking claw, which locked his nicotine-stained fingers into a claw shape perfect for his next cig. The only times I recall him without a cigarette in his hand, he had popped it in his mouth so he could use his crusty, yellow claws to toss a salad.
I vowed never to smoke. Cigarettes were not sexy or thrilling. They were gross, reeked and were sullying the salad that looked delicious just moments ago.
Rates of smoking have been declining for decades (less than one in 10 Australians smoke) but, recently, it has snuck back onto our screens, the covers of our magazines and into music videos. Of the top films released in 2023, 41 per cent contained tobacco, compared to 35 per cent in 2022.
Never mind that smoking is responsible for the deaths of 66 Australians per day.
“Think of a Greyhound bus between Sydney and Melbourne crashing and all the inhabitants dying,” says Adjunct Professor Terry Slevin, chief executive of the Public Health Association of Australia. “It happens every day as a result of smoking.”
Smoking has become a shorthand aesthetic for rebellion and authenticity, alienation and erotic danger, says Catharine Lumby, a professor of media at the University of Sydney: “Smoking has become so taboo in middle-class environments that it can read as transgressive again.”
Meanwhile, veganism is dead, per Grub Street and social media writ large.
There is nothing wrong with some meat, especially when it’s sustainably sourced and unprocessed, but you can barely escape all the topless men and their T-bones these days. The carnivore diet, they roar, is king.
This is despite the evidence telling us that eating a plant-based diet is better for the health of the planet and for our lifespan and healthspan.
“I think some people genuinely feel better initially on meat-heavy diets because they simultaneously remove a lot of ultra-processed foods, alcohol, refined carbohydrates and constant snacking,” says nutritional epidemiologist Dr Rosilene Ribeiro. “They lose weight, feel fuller and improve some metabolic markers, which is real, but then all of the improvement gets attributed solely to meat.”
In the long term, diets very high in red and processed meat and very low in fibre and plant diversity are associated with poor cardiovascular and metabolic outcomes. And associated with dying sooner.
So if you want to get closer to death, stick up your middle finger to the health moralists and eat more meat. Lots of it. And light one up while you’re at it.
Because, maybe that’s the point.
Forget looksmaxxing, we’ve moved on to deathmaxxing.
Everywhere people are brushing against death to feel more alive. But, unlike the joyful rush of jumping out of a plane, there is no parachute, just a tempting of fate and the behavioural equivalent of the band playing Nearer My God To Thee before the Titanic sunk into the sea.
Is it nihilism? Do people feel like the world is going to pot and therefore nothing they do matters, so they may as well eat/drink/smoke whatever they like?
Maybe.
“We’re living in an era marked by anxiety, political instability, climate dread, economic precarity, burnout and disillusionment,” says Lumby.
“In this context you could read smoking as a refusal of the constant message of self-improvement and self-optimisation and health moralism, which could tie into the meat [trend] too. It’s an existential exhaustion.”
This is what American writer Xochitl Gonzalez makes of it, anyway.
She was a casual smoker, before cigarettes became a symbol of malfunction, “the perfect pairing with a broken iPhone screen”, and soon replaced by cleanses and exercise regimes and going to bed early.
Time on the treadmill of life, however, led to existential questioning, she recently wrote for New York Magazine: “Unlike in my high-school days, I’m no longer certain that the future I’ve been preserving myself for is all that promising. Sure, I can eat as clean as I want, but does it matter when there are forever chemicals in the soil? If we’re walking into dinner parties wondering if the third course will include nuclear war, is there really a point in sacrificing a quick thrill in the now?”
The return to meat and cigarettes represents a nostalgia for a time before climate dread, before we knew about forever chemicals, and before we knew they – and alcohol for that matter – were harmful; a time that also seemed hedonistic and uncomplicated.
Now, there are popular social media accounts dedicated to sharing pictures of celebrities smoking. Accounts of fitfluencers espousing the virtues of meat, meat and more meat are just as pervasive.
“Social media amplifies extreme messaging,” Ribeiro points out. “‘Eat a balanced diet with lots of whole plant foods’ is not particularly exciting content. ‘Plants are toxic’ or ‘eat only steak and eggs’ gets attention very quickly. Nutrition science is nuanced, but online spaces tend to reward certainty and simplicity.”
Tinkering in the background of it all are Big Tobacco and Big Meat.
The advertising, marketing and sponsoring budgets for the tobacco industry, in particular, are now restricted.
“So they’re using more surreptitious means for getting their message across,” says Slevin.
That includes investing marketing money into product placement in various forms of media.
“They are at the forefront of the direct to eyeballs digital marketing available through social media channels. It’s one of the few channels available to them.”
There’s an irony in their influence: deathmaxxing is a rebellion from the mainstream, yet it is big industry pulling the puppet strings behind the scenes.
The antidote to it all? God only knows, but maybe it’s looking to marvel instead of mourn, as author Tamar Adler puts it.
And to do something defiant in the face of nihilism. Look for joy and, instead of looking for signs of death, look for signs of life.
If you look up and let the smoke settle, they’re everywhere.
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Sarah Berry is a lifestyle and health writer at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.
