When was it socially acceptable for women to smoke

Cigarette ads targeted at women always capitalize on the social climate of the time. So we've enlisted the expertise of former ad man and coauthor of The Cigarette Book: A Celebration of the Culture of Smoking Fletcher Watkins to find out how cigarette companies, advertisers, and the media made those ads stick. View On One Page. Photo 0 of Previous Next Start Slideshow. You May Also Like. Holy Nostalgia, Charlie Brown!

Looking back at efforts from tobacco companies and public health institutions, the connection between smoking and health literacy is evident.

Read the text-only version of this graphic. Even feminist icons like Eleanor Roosevelt — the first First Lady to smoke publicly — partook, convincing tobacco companies to consider women as a profitable consumer base. They used a range of aggressive tactics to reach this new target audience.

As a result, the proportion of female smokers more than doubled from to As World War II saw women enter the workforce at a record rate, the correlation between smoking and liberation became even stronger. Emboldened by the uptick, tobacco companies sought more ways to connect with women. The American Tobacco Company, for instance, appealed to calls for independence by featuring prominent women, such as Amelia Earhart, in Lucky Strike ads. Since tobacco products were equated with men, women began to see cigarettes as torches of freedom.

Bernays telegrammed thirty debutantes from a friend at Vogue to participate in the demonstration, encouraging them to combat the prejudice against women smokers. Marches also took place in Boston, Detroit, and San Francisco, and newspapers across the country published stories on it.

Bernays central idea was to manipulate the opinion and values of the consumer, and to break down the appeal of cigarettes through networking and media.

The success of expanding the market to include women related to the association of cigarettes with broader social change. Women smoking in the late 19th century.

Martin, told The New York Times. The idea was wildly successful. It even seems to have emboldened other businesses. He felt that a smoking woman eroded the respect a man should have for her and that the practice was unseemly and immoral. Though he had never personally seen a woman smoke, he proposed a bill that forbade owners of public establishments from allowing women to smoke.

It passed unanimously.