Women smoking. How did it come back?

I wish it hadn't.

I'm amazed by how many young women smoke, and comparatively how few men do.   This is very much the reverse of the way things were when I was young.  I.e., a lot of men smoked, but comparatively fewer women did.

Which isn't to say that women didn't smoke.

Historically, women smoking was frowned upon.  It didn't really get rolling until the teens.  Prior to that, it was not only looked down upon, but suggestive in a variety of ways, none of which were really good to have suggested about you.  

Following World War One, however, it rapidly expanded. Cigarettes alone got a big boost by the Great War, taking over from cigars as the favored nicotine delivery method, and the Roaring Twenties brought in flapperism and all that entailed, including suggestive clothing, illegal booze, and of course smoking cigarettes.  Flapperism went away but the illegal booze and smoking didin't, something that kept on keeping on during the Great Depression.  Drinking became legal again and smoking became nearly universal.

Women had their own brand of cigarettes during the Feminist revolution of the 1970s, Virginia Slims, a name that not only referred to the cigarettes themselves but what smoking can do, at first, to a person's figure.

Ultimately it'll ruin that figure, of course.  And for women it not only increases the risk of lung cancer, but breast cancer.  We know this for sure, and nobody really denies that.

Given that, smoking really declined following the 70s. Even by the late 1970s, when I was in high school, girls smoking did so to suggest they were "bad" girls, although most weren't really bad. Rather, they were like Jessica Rabbit, just drawn that way, and in their case, attempting to draw themselves that way.  Rebels without a clue, so to speak.

In college I can't recall very many women smoking.  I can recall some university men smoking, but by and large it had really fallen out of favor.  And when I was first practicing law, it was really on the outs. A smoking woman could be guaranteed to be at least middle aged  and therefore, not young.

Well, it's really back.

Why?