Some researchers here at NCI have recently looked at mortality rates from
lung cancer by socioeconomic status quintiles. In 1969 the higest SES group
had the highest lung cancer mortality rate. Around 1985 the rates were
almost identical across the groups. In 1997 there is a sharp gradient in
the direction opposite the 1969 pattern: the highest mortality rates occur
among the lowest SES group and the lowest mortality among the highest SES
group. In 1969 the mortality rate was 325/100,000 for the highest SES group
and 250/100,000 for the lowest SES group. In 1997 the mortality rate for
the highest SES group was 420/100,000 and 550/100,000 for the lowest SES
group.
So what should we conclude from this data?
-----Original Message-----
From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2000 2:00 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:4780] Women and cigarettes
Jordan Goodman, "Tobacco in History" (Routledge Press, 1993):
The targeting of women as cigarette smokers in the United States happened
slowly and uncertainly. One of the first advertisements was for Helmar's
cigarettes, a brand manufactured by Lorillard. The advertisement featured a
woman with oriental features holding a cigarette between her lips. This
appeared in 1919 but it was not until 1926 that the first advertisement
appeared in which women were portrayed in the role of accepting the
challenge of smoking a cigarette. The advertisement for Chesterfield showed
a couple in a romantic setting: the man is shown smoking while the woman,
in a sensuous pose, pleads with the caption 'Blow some my way'. In 1927
Philip Morris, one of the smaller cigarette manufacturers of the time,
advertised one of its brands, Marlboro, showing a woman holding a cigarette
with the caption 'Women, when they smoke at all, quickly develop
discriminating taste'. Lucky Strike entered the fray on two fronts: it
solicited and printed testimonials from European artistes who informed the
reader that they had discovered their favourite cigarette in Lucky Strike,
a cigarette that was mild and mellow and because of a special process that
treated the tobacco - 'It's Toasted' - Luckies protected your throat. The
makers of Lucky Strike, American Tobacco, pursued the advantages of smoking
their brand with new hard-hitting messages in advertisements in 1928 and
1929 in which women were urged to smoke with the caption 'Reach for a Lucky
Instead of a Sweet'. This was backed up by testimonials from well-known
personalities on the desirable effects on body weight and figure by
substituting cigarettes for sweets. And, if the point hadn't been driven
home enough, in the next few years Lucky Strike adverts championed the
svelte over the fat body with headlines such as 'Pretty Curves Win!' and
captions such as: 'Be moderate - be moderate in all things, even in
smoking. Avoid that future shadow by avoiding overindulgence, if you would
maintain that modern, ever youthful figure "Reach for a Lucky Instead".' Or
the advertisement entitled 'The Grim Sceptre', in which a woman haunted by
a double chin is urged, again, to reach for a Lucky instead. Reynolds came
back hitting hard in 1928 with their own version of the advertisement
targeted directly at women, showing scenes of women alone as well as
couples, the woman in each case getting closer and closer to smoking the
cigarette. In the following year Reynolds turned the first Chesterfield
advertisement on its head when they showed a woman offering a Camel to a
man who responds with a turn of phrase that must have warmed the hearts of
the copy writers: 'I'd Walk a Mile for a Camel - but a "Miss" is as Good as
a Mile'. You've come a long way, baby, as the later advertisements put it.
What were the messages of cigarette advertising during the 1920s and 1930s
and what was their connection with the culture of consumption? As Michael
Schudson points out in his study of advertising and American society, the
chief theme that advertising emphasized was mildness, a theme that
integrated the ingredients of the cigarette (mild, mellow tobaccos wrapped
in pure white paper) with the action of smoking the cigarette portrayed in
refined terms and circumstances. Presumably this message was designed as
much to reinforce their confidence in the product as it was to wean pipe
and cigar smokers and, presumably, tobacco chewers from their habit; after
all, men were the smokers. The advertising of cigarettes to women, judging
from the text of these advertisements, stayed on the edge of the social
conflict which marked the rise of the woman cigarette smoker during the
1920s. It legitimized the results, and cultivated an image of the woman
smoker that was complementary to the image of women over which the conflict
arose in the first place. The gender politics of the 1920s rested on the
question of the access to power by women, in relation to men, as well as by
women in the past. The cigarette was adopted as a symbol of the emergence
of the new woman of the 1920s. The tobacco companies responded to this
social change not by entering the debate but by adding their own fine
tuning to the new woman image: slender, chic and mildly seductive. As for
men, as Schudson argues, the cigarette represented, both symbolically and
actually, a convenience and refinement, in terms of pleasure, as opposed to
the cigar and pipe, both of which came to be viewed as cumbersome and were
therefore relegated to special occasions such as the after-dinner treat:
cigarettes were more suitable to the work and leisure culture of the
postwar era than were other forms of tobacco use.
The cigarette was adopted by women as a badge of emancipation in the period
following the post-First World War. Since then the proportion of women
smoking has increased continuously until just recently. In the United
States there was a steady rise in the relative number of women smoking
until the mid-1960s, after which it levelled off or decreased slightly. A
similar pattern can be observed in Britain. In Italy smoking among women
was uncommon before the Second World War but increased very rapidly after,
and continued to increase until the mid-1980s. This is only part of the
story, for while men have been decreasing their consumption of cigarettes,
in the sense that the proportion of men smoking has been declining for a
long time, women have only recently decreased theirs. If the cigarette is a
symbol of equality, then men and women have only recently become equal,
with some evidence that cigarettes have become appropriated by women more
than men as a commodity in some parts of the world.
Louis Proyect
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