Cigarette Advertisements^37Women have come a long way from the
presuffrage era when it was unladylike to
smoke. Taken up as acause célèbre,women’s
right to cigarettes was a smokescreen in the
struggle for more fundamental rights. On the
way to achieving first-class citizenship, women
became first-class tobacco consumers. And if
women were going to smoke, reasoned the
tobacco industry, then why not encourage
them to smoke a lot? By 1910 advertisements
hinted that smoking was a right—by the 1920 s
it was a duty.
No expense was spared by Lucky
Strike in recruiting female customers. To
promote the image of sophistication a series of
1930 s magazine ads featured stylized paintings
of women decked out in evening finery. In “OK
Miss America! We thank you for your patronage” a woman wearing
a revealing, low-cut satin gown is so above the fray that she isn’t even
holding a Lucky, but the implication is that she had just finished a satisfying
smoke. In the haughty “I do” advertisement a sultry bride pauses for a
relaxed smoke and gives her vow to the cigarette of choice. Cigarettes were
marketed as fashion accessories, but these ads, which ran during the Great
Depression, were not targeted exclusively to women of means. Using smoke
and mirrors, cigarette advertising suggested the promise of a better life.
Advertising wizards also made cigarettes seductive to women by
invoking the ideal. High culture was used in one sales pitch that borrowed
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “First a Shadow Then a Sorrow,” to
announce Lucky Strike’s diet plan. “Avoid that future shadow,” the copy
suggested, “by refraining from over indulgence. If you would maintain the
modern figure of fashion.” Under an idealized color painting of a young
woman haunted by the shadow of a double chin, the copy read: “We do not
represent that smoking Lucky Strike Cigarettes will bring modern figures
or cause the reduction of flesh. We do declare that when tempted to do
yourself too well, if you will ‘Reach for a Lucky’ instead, you will thus avoid
over indulgence in things that cause excess weight and, by avoiding over
indulgence maintain a modern, graceful form.”