The Return of the Old World: Why Is Gen Z Embracing Cigarettes, Conservatism and Purity Culture?
There was a time when it seemed that certain cultural battles had already been fought. Smoking had become increasingly unacceptable. Homophobia was losing ground in many parts of the Western world. Feminism had made it possible for more women to imagine lives beyond marriage and motherhood. Sexual liberation had challenged the idea that desire was something to be ashamed of. The internet, for all its faults, promised to make information more accessible and expose younger generations to lives beyond the boundaries of their immediate surroundings.
None of this meant that prejudice had disappeared, or that progress had been universal. The world was never as enlightened as we sometimes remember it. Nevertheless, there was a widespread sense that the direction of travel was forward. Today, that confidence feels less secure.
Young people are smoking cigarettes again, or at least making smoking culturally fashionable in ways that previous generations of public health campaigns worked hard to reverse. Online personalities promote rigid gender hierarchies, young men are drawn into the manosphere, and the traditional wife has become a familiar figure in social media culture. Conservative attitudes towards sexuality, femininity and masculinity are finding new audiences. Meanwhile, some young people appear less interested in sexual experimentation than the generations who came before them, despite growing up in a culture saturated with sexual imagery.
These developments are not identical, and they do not describe every young person. Nor does every cigarette smoker harbour reactionary politics, every religious young person oppose women's rights, or every woman who wants a traditional family endorse the subordination of women. But taken together, these cultural currents raise an uncomfortable question: why are some of the attitudes that appeared to be losing their grip returning in new forms?
On today's menu:
The Cigarette Is Back. Didn't We Already Settle This?
For decades, the social position of smoking changed dramatically. Once an ordinary feature of everyday life, cigarettes became increasingly associated with addiction, disease and preventable death. Governments introduced restrictions, public health campaigns challenged tobacco advertising, and smoking became prohibited in many indoor public spaces. The transformation was significant. Smoking had once been marketed as glamorous, sophisticated and even desirable. Eventually, much of that image gave way to an understanding of the considerable harm caused by tobacco.
Yet cigarettes have not disappeared from youth culture. In recent years, smoking has resurfaced as a fashion statement in some online subcultures, celebrity imagery and youth-oriented aesthetics. The cigarette appears again as an accessory, a gesture of indifference or a symbol of being too cool to care.
There is something revealing about this reversal.
Modern culture places extraordinary emphasis on personal optimisation. We are encouraged to improve our sleep, monitor our exercise, regulate our diets, protect our mental health and turn ourselves into increasingly efficient versions of who we already are. Every weakness becomes a problem to solve. Every habit can be measured. Every aspect of life can be transformed into a project of self-improvement. Against this background, smoking can be presented as an act of defiance. It is unhealthy, unnecessary and difficult to justify, which is precisely what gives it a certain rebellious appeal.
But this does not mean that smoking has suddenly become an act of political resistance. Sometimes a cigarette is simply a cigarette, and the revival of smoking imagery should not be confused with proof that young people are smoking at the same rates as earlier generations. Tobacco use and the social acceptability of tobacco use are two different things.
The more interesting issue is why a behaviour that public health campaigns worked so hard to discourage has acquired a new cultural currency. Perhaps the cigarette represents a desire to reject the rules of a society that constantly tells us how to live. Perhaps it offers an identity that feels older, harder or more sophisticated than the carefully managed selfhood demanded by contemporary culture.
But rebellion is not automatically liberation. An industry that profits from addiction can benefit when harmful behaviour becomes fashionable again. And a generation's desire to reject excessive self-discipline should not require it to rediscover the very habits that previous generations struggled to escape.
If the cigarette has returned as a symbol of freedom, it is worth asking who actually benefits from that freedom, and who pays for it.
The Manosphere and the Reinvention of Misogyny
The more politically consequential development is the growing visibility of online communities that frame masculinity as a struggle against women, feminism and social change.
The manosphere is not one unified movement. It includes a range of online spaces, from dating advice communities and self-described men's rights advocates to explicitly misogynistic influencers. Their beliefs differ, but some of the most prominent figures share a familiar message: modern society has become unfair to men, feminism has gone too far, and men must reclaim authority over their lives by returning to supposedly natural gender roles.
The appeal is not difficult to understand, even when the conclusions are deeply troubling. Young men face real pressures. Economic insecurity, loneliness, changing expectations around relationships and uncertainty about what constitutes a successful adult life can leave them feeling disoriented. Traditional markers of masculinity, such as financial independence and the ability to provide for a family, may seem increasingly difficult to achieve.
Into this uncertainty comes an industry of influencers offering simple explanations and equally simple solutions. Your problems, they suggest, are not the result of an unstable economy, isolation, unrealistic expectations or a society that often fails to teach emotional communication. Your problems are caused by feminism. Women have become too demanding. Men have become too weak. Society has forgotten its natural order. The solution is to become dominant, wealthy, physically imposing and emotionally invulnerable. Women, meanwhile, are assigned a role within a hierarchy that supposedly existed long before modern social movements challenged it.
This is an appealing narrative because it transforms confusion into certainty. It provides a villain, a rulebook and a community. It tells young men that their frustrations are justified while discouraging them from examining the systems, habits and expectations that may actually be making their lives difficult.
It also turns insecurity into a business model. Anger generates engagement, controversial opinions attract attention, and the promise of personal transformation can be packaged into courses, subscriptions and products. The result is a particular kind of reactionary politics disguised as self-improvement.
There is nothing inherently wrong with encouraging men to exercise, develop confidence, build friendships or take responsibility for their lives. Men deserve support, meaningful relationships and spaces in which they can discuss their problems without ridicule. The problem arises when self-improvement becomes inseparable from contempt for women, or when masculinity is defined by the ability to control other people. A healthy response to male loneliness would seek to make men less isolated. A misogynistic response teaches them to blame women for their isolation. Those are not the same thing.
The Trad Wife and the New Politics of Femininity
Alongside the manosphere, the trad-wife movement has helped bring traditional gender roles back into public discussion. The image is familiar: a woman who devotes herself to her husband, children and home, often presented through carefully composed videos of baking, cleaning, cooking and domestic life. Her appearance may borrow from earlier decades, and her message may suggest that modern feminism has left women exhausted, dissatisfied and disconnected from their natural purpose.
Some of the appeal is understandable. Domestic work can be meaningful. Raising children is important. Cooking, gardening, sewing and maintaining a home can offer forms of creativity and accomplishment that are often undervalued in a culture organised around paid employment. Choosing to devote one's life to family is not inherently anti-feminist. Feminism should include the freedom to make that choice.
The difficulty begins when the choice is presented as the correct choice for women generally, or when traditional marriage is framed as a system in which men naturally lead and women are expected to submit.
The distinction between personal preference and political ideology matters enormously. A woman who wants to stay home with her children is exercising a personal freedom. An influencer who argues that women are inherently inferior leaders, should defer to male authority or are less valuable outside marriage is making a claim about the social position of women. The two should not be confused.
Nor should we overlook the economic conditions behind the traditional domestic ideal. A single-income household is not realistically available to everyone. Dependence on a partner can leave someone financially vulnerable, especially when there are children involved. The beautiful image of domestic life rarely includes the difficult questions about power, unpaid labour and what happens when a marriage breaks down.
The trad-wife aesthetic can therefore become a way of making an old hierarchy look like a lifestyle choice.
Its popularity also reveals something about the failures of modern society. If women are exhausted by the demands of paid work, childcare and household management, perhaps the answer is not to return to a system in which women were expected to shoulder domestic responsibilities by default. Perhaps the answer is to make care more affordable, distribute household labour more fairly and allow people to build lives that do not leave them permanently overwhelmed.
There is an irony in presenting the past as an escape from modern pressures while ignoring how many of those pressures arise from the absence of genuine support. A society that values family life should not require women to surrender their independence in order to enjoy it.
Sexual Liberation, Purity Culture and the Paradox of a Hypersexual World
One of the strangest contradictions of contemporary youth culture is that sexual imagery is everywhere, yet this does not necessarily translate into greater sexual freedom.
For generations, sexual liberation was associated with challenging the idea that desire was shameful, questioning restrictive moral codes and giving people greater control over their intimate lives. The sexual revolution did not eliminate sexual inequality, but it helped change public conversations about contraception, relationships, gender roles and personal autonomy.
Today, the picture is more complicated. In some online communities, traditional sexual morality is gaining renewed appeal. Women are judged for their sexual histories, men are encouraged to pursue status through sexual conquest, and relationships are discussed through rigid rules about purity, value and gender. Elsewhere, young people are increasingly open about being uninterested in sex, choosing to delay it or prioritising other parts of their lives.
It is important not to assume that every generation has been more sexually active than the next, or that contemporary young people share a single set of attitudes. Research in several countries has found changes in sexual behaviour among younger people, but the patterns vary by country, age group and measure. Declining sexual activity, where documented, does not by itself prove that conservative ideology is responsible.
Nevertheless, the cultural contradiction deserves attention. We live in a world where sexual content is easy to access, bodies are routinely used to sell products, and social media encourages people to present themselves as desirable. Yet many people also experience greater anxiety about dating, intimacy and relationships. Sex can become another form of performance: a way to demonstrate status, attractiveness or social success rather than an experience grounded in mutual desire and trust. Within conservative online spaces, this anxiety is sometimes answered through purity culture. Sexual restraint is framed as a route to moral superiority, women are encouraged to preserve their value through chastity, and traditional marriage is presented as the proper destination for desire. Other online communities promote an equally restrictive approach from the opposite direction, treating sexual experience as a measure of masculine achievement.
Although these outlooks appear different, both can reduce intimacy to a system of social ranking. One measures worth through purity; the other measures it through conquest. Neither leaves much room for the complicated reality of human relationships. A genuinely free sexual culture should allow people to choose abstinence, casual sex, committed relationships or no romantic relationships at all without being treated as morally superior or inferior. It should also recognise that consent, mutual respect and emotional wellbeing matter more than conformity to any predetermined ideal.
Why Does Conservatism Appeal to Young People?
It is tempting to interpret these developments as evidence that an entire generation has suddenly become more conservative. The reality is more complicated. Young people are politically diverse, and attitudes differ considerably across countries, genders, economic backgrounds and social environments. In some places, younger voters have moved towards progressive positions; in others, conservative movements have gained ground, particularly among certain groups of young men. Online visibility can also exaggerate the influence of a movement that appears everywhere on a particular platform.
Still, the growing visibility of reactionary ideas tells us something about the conditions in which they flourish. For one thing, uncertainty creates a market for certainty. The traditional family, rigid gender roles and strict moral rules can be presented as answers to problems that feel impossibly complicated. They promise stable identities in a world where employment is insecure, relationships are changing and the future seems difficult to predict.
For another, reactionary ideas offer belonging. Online communities give people a shared vocabulary, common enemies and a sense that they understand something the rest of society has forgotten.
There is also the power of contrarianism. When an idea is widely condemned, defending it can become a way of demonstrating independence. If a young person feels that mainstream culture is preachy, hypocritical or condescending, deliberately rejecting its values can feel like an act of intellectual freedom.
This is where reactionary movements can become particularly effective. They present themselves as rebels even when their proposed social order is profoundly traditional. The man who insists that society must return to a hierarchy in which men command and women obey can imagine himself as a fearless outsider. The influencer who promotes restrictive gender roles can describe her message as radical truth-telling. The young person who adopts an older moral code can feel liberated by rejecting the expectations of their own time.
But the appearance of rebellion does not tell us whether an idea is liberating. A movement can be culturally provocative while politically advocating a return to older restrictions. It can reject one set of social expectations only to impose another.
The Internet Has Made the Past Easier to Sell
The return of traditional values cannot be understood separately from the platforms through which they spread. Social media rewards material that provokes strong reactions. Anger, controversy, aspiration and moral outrage can all attract attention, while complicated explanations are often harder to communicate in short videos and memorable slogans.
An influencer who argues that relationships are difficult because of economic pressures, loneliness, poor communication and changing social expectations has a complicated story to tell. An influencer who says that feminism ruined everything has a much simpler one. The same is true of nostalgia. A carefully styled video of a woman baking bread in a vintage dress is visually immediate. The historical reality of women's domestic labour, restricted employment opportunities and financial dependence is not. Platforms can turn an ideology into an aesthetic before an audience has examined its implications. Traditional values become attractive through familiar images, music, clothing and domestic rituals. Political claims enter the picture gradually, attached to content that initially appears harmless.
This does not mean that everyone who enjoys vintage clothing or traditional cooking is being drawn into reactionary politics. This is more so to point out that aesthetics can create an emotional environment in which certain ideas feel natural, comforting or desirable before they are critically considered.
The same platforms also allow progressive movements, feminist criticism and LGBTQ+ communities to find audiences. The internet is not inherently conservative or progressive. It is a shared space in which competing visions of society compete for attention.
What Does This Mean for LGBTQ+ People?
The resurgence of rigid gender roles has implications beyond heterosexual relationships. Traditionalist ideologies often depend on the idea that men and women have distinct, complementary purposes, especially within the family. When these roles are treated as natural, universal and morally binding, people who do not conform can become targets of suspicion or hostility.
For LGBTQ+ people, this can mean renewed arguments that heterosexual marriage is the only legitimate form of family life, that gender diversity threatens social stability, or that equal rights have gone too far.
Not every conservative person holds these views, and religious or traditional communities are not uniformly hostile to LGBTQ+ people. Many religious believers support equality, and many people who value conventional family life have no desire to restrict the lives of others.
But where traditionalism becomes a political programme, it can place pressure on people whose identities or relationships challenge its assumptions. The consequences are not merely theoretical. The social acceptance of LGBTQ+ people depends partly on whether they can participate in ordinary life without being treated as exceptions to a supposedly natural order. A society can disagree about family arrangements while still protecting people's equal rights. It can accommodate religious freedom without making one religious or moral worldview compulsory for everyone. It can value motherhood and fatherhood without treating other forms of life as inferior.
The question is whether the return of traditional values means a renewed appreciation for commitment, care and community, or a renewed attempt to determine who is permitted to belong. Those are very different projects.
Progress Was Never Guaranteed
Perhaps the greatest mistake made by those who believed society was steadily becoming more enlightened was assuming that progress, once achieved, would take care of itself. History offers little support for that confidence.
Rights are secured through laws, institutions, cultural change and sustained collective effort. They can also be challenged, weakened or reversed. Attitudes change unevenly, and the same generation can contain people with radically different visions of what the future should look like. Nor is every return to an older tradition necessarily harmful. People can rediscover religious practice, choose marriage, embrace domestic life, read classical literature or adopt a more conservative personal lifestyle without wishing to take freedoms away from others.
The crucial distinction is between choosing a tradition and imposing it.
Freedom means being able to live differently from the expectations of your parents, your community or the dominant culture. It also means being able to choose a more traditional life without being dismissed as unintelligent or incapable of independence. A genuinely pluralistic society makes room for both.
The danger appears when one way of life is elevated into a moral standard against which everyone else is judged. When women are told that their value depends on submission, when men are taught to regard equality as humiliation, or when LGBTQ+ people are expected to justify their existence, tradition stops being a personal inheritance and becomes an instrument of control.
The Future Should Not Be a Repetition of the Past
There is a reason the old world continues to attract us. It contains traditions worth preserving, works of art worth rediscovering and forms of community that modern life has sometimes neglected. But it also contains prejudices that earlier generations challenged at considerable personal cost.
We should be able to appreciate the literature of the nineteenth century without wanting to restore its restrictions on women. Would it not be better to value family life without assuming that every family must follow the same model? Instead of following the manosphere, we ought to discuss men's struggles without turning women into enemies. We should be able to respect sexual restraint without reviving shame as a tool of social control. And we should be able to recognise the appeal of rebellion without assuming that everything rebellious is progressive.
The revival of smoking, the manosphere, trad-wife culture and purity politics may seem like separate trends, but they all invite us to examine the stories we tell about freedom, identity and the past. Some reflect genuine dissatisfaction with contemporary life. Others turn that dissatisfaction into a market for harmful habits or restrictive social hierarchies.
Perhaps the most important question is not why young people are looking backwards, but what they are hoping to find there. If they are searching for community, we should build stronger communities. If they want more stable relationships, we should encourage honesty, commitment and mutual respect. If they are exhausted by the demands of modern life, we should reconsider the economic and social conditions that make ordinary existence so difficult. If they are looking for a sense of identity, we should offer something more meaningful than rigid rules about how men and women are supposed to behave.
We do not have to choose between a shallow, exhausting modernity and an idealised past that never truly existed. We can keep what is valuable in our traditions while refusing to revive their injustices. Progress was never inevitable. Neither is regression. The future will be shaped by the things we choose to tolerate, the ideas we challenge and the freedoms we insist belong to everyone.
And if the old world is returning, we should at least be honest about which parts of it we are inviting back.
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