Annabel
In America, before the 1920s, cigarettes were a male thing. Few women smoked. It was seen as slutty and unladylike. But, as tobacco companies recognised that women were an untapped market, they set out to change the culture. They enlisted the help of Edward Bernays, a public-relations mastermind and a nephew of Sigmund Freud’s. He asked psychoanalyst A.A. Brill what women’s unconscious motivation to smoke might be. Brill said that cigarettes were symbols of masculine empowerment, little penises, and that ‘penis envy’ could drive women to smoke. Armed with this insight, Bernays staged an intervention during a 1929 New York Easter parade. He organised for a group of fashionable debutants (not too pretty, not too plain), to join the parade, then to all light up simultaneously. He tipped off the press, saying the women were suffragettes lighting ‘torches of freedom’. The press took the bait. The photographers were waiting. It was free promotion and an early instance of psychoanalysis being used to shape desires (before the fact) rather than simply analysing them (after).1
Big tobacco cashed in on the association between smoking and feminism. They recruited modern heroines, like trans-Atlantic aviatrix Amelia Earhart, for endorsements. Smoking was linked to female strength, defiance, and emancipation, and also promoted as a way to stay slim. They created special brands for women, shaping and styling cigarettes and packs ‘for the feminine hand’, turning them into seductive props.2 Even after 1964’s damning Surgeon General’s Report, Virginia Slims (introduced in 1968) could still be promoted as defiance of patriarchy: ‘You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby’. Today, in the affluent west, women are as likely to smoke as men, achieving a dubious form of... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline
Steve Carr, Annabel, 2007. Still. HD transferred to DVD. Duration 1hr 10mins. Courtesy the artist.
