From Marlboros to Mint Pouches, from Monster to “Clean Energy”: How a Male-Coded Habit Is Crossing the Aisle
For most of the 20th century, cigarettes and (later) energy drinks wore the same jacket: male-coded. Smoking spread through barracks, shop floors, pubs, and factory gates—spaces where men clustered and spectacle didn’t penalize them. The cues screamed “masculine”: fire, grit, ash, a voice roughened by smoke. Early energy drinks repeated the pattern—extreme-sports ads, matte-black cans, bitter bite, convenience-store endcaps—telegraphing risk and rev to young men.
What’s changing isn’t the molecule; it’s the friction profile and aesthetic. Nicotine pouches delete the very costs that historically taxed women hardest—plume, smell, hair/clothes contamination, cosmetic aging cues—while letting the “state control” remain. The result: adoption opens in image-sensitive contexts (offices, retail, healthcare, on-camera jobs) where cigarettes could never live. Meanwhile, a new wave of energy drinks reframes the category around wellness and composure instead of chaos—think cleaner flavor, lighter cans, pastel or white palettes, “no sugar / green tea extract / vitamins,” distribution through gyms, yoga/barre studios, and supermarket cold boxes rather than only gas stations. (Celsius is the poster child: fitness-forward branding, sessionable flavors, and a can that looks at home next to a water bottle.)
Three levers drive the gender shift:
Cosmetic externalities ↓
Smoke’s beauty tax (odor, staining, skin impact) once repelled many women. Pouches remove the visible tells; “clean energy” drinks avoid sticky sweetness, dye-stained tongues, and “dare me” branding.Ritual optics → Daily utility
A five-minute smoke break is a public event; a pouch is a private valve. A skull-branded 16-oz bomb reads like a stunt; a slim can with citrus and “thermogenic” copy reads like gear. Same function (arousal control), different theater.Packaging psychology
Design shifts from angular/heavy to sleek/bright; from “extreme” to “athletic.” Flavor architecture moves from harsh-bitter to crisp-mint, citrus, berry—profiles with high repeat and low social cost. The can and the tin feel like accessories, not declarations.
The outcome is not a simple flip from male to female; it’s de-gendering via engineering. When you strip the mess and menace from the carrier, demand looks less like a tribe and more like a bell curve. Men still dominate legacy formats (cigarettes, traditional snus) in many markets, but pouches and “clean” energy are expanding the center—especially among women who were historically blocked by smoke’s stigma and heavy-metal branding.
The lesson for operators and investors is straightforward: remove friction that maps onto identity (beauty, scent, social optics), and a “male” category becomes a human category. The levers are boring on paper—chemistry, flavor, form factor, design, channel—but they rearrange who shows up.
