When Smoking Was Sexy
I’m really not old enough to remember the era when smoking cigarettes was supposed to be sexy. I’m thankful for that; my reaction to cigarettes is revulsion in varying degrees depending on proximity. I’ve always been one of those people for whom the idea of kissing a smoker is like the thought of licking out an ashtray — which is to say, retch-inducing even in the imagination.
Given that, images like this always strike me as particularly jarring:
Sometimes I wonder: if the tobacco industry spent a century and untold billions selling the notion that people who smoke are sexier than people who don’t, why hasn’t ADM and the rest of the modern mechanized processed-foods industry managed to use its advertising billions to convince people that a physique born of corn syrup and white flour, deep fried in canola oil, is sexy? If you’ve see the people in WALL*E, you’ll know what I’m asking — why isn’t that future here now, being reinforced throughout our popular culture the way smoking was in 1950?
(Please don’t misunderstand — although I’m personally closer to the WALL*E vision than I am to the sammich-deprived fashion-industry ideal of good looks, I wouldn’t approve of the food industry winning that propaganda war any more than I approve of the way the tobacco industry won theirs for many decades. I’m just curious why they don’t seem to be fighting it, when they’ve got the deep pockets and the profit motive and the utter lack of conscience that would let ’em do it.)
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Cigarettes are a delivery system for a drug, nicotine . The tobacco industry spent billions on improving the potency of the drug . I do not think sex was on their minds . Hollywood provided the glamour factor . Promoting food consumption with billions would be like promoting suicide; a waste of money, anyway If you don’t eat you die . If you don’t smoke you live . Drew from Quebec .
Actually one of the consumable “food” products did do that sort of advertising. That was the alcohol division. Which it still does on occassion, but mostly in print forms of adverts, as their limitations on video prevent them from doing as much. Bacchus, I am like you, though my aversion is more to the alcohol consumers than it is to smoking. I would rather not kiss a bar. I am a smoker, so can relate to your revulsion. Another food product that tried to seel sexuality, was the “got milk” ads with the famous (and somewhat tantilizing in it’s metaphor) milk mustaches.
The image of a vamp smoking a cigarette with a long holder, sucking on it and blowing smoke; what better analogy for oral sex? The pursing of the lips, the opening of the mouth to allow smoke to roll out, the half-closed eyes. Sexy. No, the smell is not (just as a drunk does not smell good), but the image is… sex sells.
Ha!
I’m old enough to remember the girls who smoked were the ones who “did it”.
Cigarette breath never particularily bothered me in the day, even though I didn’t smoke. Now, I suppose, it would.
As for alcohol, I’m with Winston Churchill who famously said he got more out of it, than it out of him.
I agree those with a tendency toward alcohol addiction need to stay away. And more power to ’em for doing so, but in moderation, I think it’s great.
What you’re missing is that tobacco is a drug, and it makes you feel sexy, even if you’re not. What the adds are trying to imply is that their brand more perfectly conveys that satisfaction.
The analogous food advertising is the folksy mascots for what is marketed as home-style cooking or comfort food. Sara Lee, Mrs. Butterworth, Uncle Ben, and others, are appealing as familial elders that bring exactly the kind of food that reminds you of your childhood, along with a generous helping of old-timey racism.
The food people haven’t made found a way to market highly processed and enriched food that will make you fat, except by suggesting that it is somehow the same that your grandparents were eating. When and if they do find a way, it probably won’t be with sex, since that doesn’t translate well to food culture, which is so family centered.
Not everything is better with sex: cigarettes are, food isn’t (except chocolate).
When I look at that pic, I don’t notice the cigarette that much…. but I do think she’s about to stick her finger up her nose.
Bley’s,
I can think of a few more foods, but you hit number 1 on the list. Whipped Cream, Stawberries, cherries and maybe even sugar if added to the whipped cream and/or strawberries).
Actually, food is sold by sex; just not in an obvious fashion.
Look at the people toting foods in ads. Do you see fat, happy, people enjoying a meal? Nope! It’s all skinny, attractive people chowing down. If you’re not convinced yet, just look a the Food Network. How many chubby chefs and show hosts do you see? Not many.
Why? Wouldn’t you want people to think your food leads to being well-fed and happy?
Actually, the reasoning is because “Fat” has become equal to “slob” in the USA in the last century. Gone are the days of chubby apple-cheeked girls being considered “pleasingly plump”; people want to see skinny people as skinny is glamorized much as smoking was though ad campaigns and a deluge in the media. Thus, to equate their food to “will keep you attractive” the food industry show skinny people with their products. It’s always cheaper and easier to make an ad following popular belief than to change popular belief.
Personally, I find it kind of sexy in a subtly kinky way. There’s something very sensual about the whole act of drawing the smoke into your lungs. The fact that it is, in all likelihood, going to do you lasting damage carries a particularly strange, 19th Century romantic fatalism.
Hugs,
rg
I always find it depressing when I see an attractive woman smoking. Whether in real life, a model doing a photo shoot or on film. I could charitably be described as militantly anti-tobacco. If I could will tobacco out of existence, I would.
Food is an even stronger drive than addiction to smoking. You can quit smoking, you cannot quit food.
You don’t have to sell eating, people have to eat. So, there’s your hook. Then, just like the tobacco industry treats their tobacco to make the nicotine more addictive, you pump up the addictive qualities of foods by filling it with sugar, salt, and fat, but don’t worry about the nutritional qualities.
Then not only do you get to sell people the food they eat, you get to sell them the vitamin supplements they need because the food isn’t nutritious or truly statisfying, AND you get to set an unreachable goal of being thin while eating these foods and sell them all the diet and exercise products they need to try to reach that goal.
Oh, and you get to sell them cigarettes that help supress their appatite as well. :)
Oooh…. but smoking is still sexy darlings…and its getting even more so now…..you just have the wrong pic
Check out a googly immmmmmmmmage for classy Marlene Dietrich
;)
Shudder. Sorry, Prippy, saying something doesn’t make it so.
Obviously it’s an area where tastes differ, and that’s fine, but there’s a huge intergenerational difference of opinion on this one.
they say the three best things in life are a drink before and a smoke after!
once it was usual to light up and share a cigarette after sex, we’ve got lovely memories of this with our early lovers; smoking in bed was sexy once…
R&G X