Flappers, Suffragettes and Cigarettes
Changes were not just about clothes, and women were also increasing demanding equal rights. Cigarettes could be seen as part of this.
Girls begin smoking to demonstrate that they are strictly modern and up-to-date in their views and habits of life. Girls, too, make the point that they have as good a right to smoke as have men. (Benson 193)
In this change was an opportunity for the tobacco industry, which began to advertise cigarettes directly to women. These often featured celebrities or society women endorsing the cigarette, and sometimes showed cigarettes as part of an elegant life.
The head of American Tobacco Company, George Washington Hill, saw the female audience as "a gold mine right in our front yard." Lingering stigmas against women smoking in public seemed and barrier to sales, and Hill wanted to find ways to remove that stigma and encourage more women to smoke in restaurants or on the street. He believed women would smoke more if they could smoke everywhere.
How can we get women to smoke on the street? They're smoking indoors. But damn it, if they spend half the time outdoors and we can get 'em to smoke outdoors, we'll damn near double our female market.
Hill hired a leader in the emerging field of public relations and marketing, Edward Bernays. During World War I, Bernays worked for the Committee on Public Information where we developed his views on creating effective propaganda. A nephew of Freud, Bernays sought to use psychology to shape public opinion. He believed that only using advertising was not a good enough tactic--people needed to believe that they totally exercised free choice in deciding to smoke, and should feel they came to the decision on their own without influence. Brandt, A. The Cigarette Century. p. 87. Bernays believed that there was a relationship between the desire for equal rights and the right to vote for women, and the right to smoke in public. Wishing to establish this more widely in the minds of women without overtly advertising, he devised a staged "news" event to have women at the annual New York City Easter Parade light up Lucky Strikes.. He enlisted the help of a committed feminist, Ruth Hale, who invited women to come to the parade to smoke, urging:
Bernays and Hale successfully recruited a few prominent women to appear in the parade smoking.Women!
Light another torch of freedom!
Fight another sex taboo.
It's now a matter of some debate how successful the stunt truly was in promoting smoking in public for women. Bernays claimed that it was a hugely successful and seminal event, but perhaps this was part of his own publicity in shaping of his reputation. Modern historians have started to doubt his claim, and have shown that coverage was more modest than Bernays claimed in his memoir. The New York Times did cover the parade and included a mention of the women smoking, but not in an extensive way. As a master of public relations it is possible that the story of "Torches for Freedom" as a great victory for cigarette sales was an example itself of fake news.
Murphree, V. (2015). Edward bernays's 1929 “Torches of freedom” march: Myths and historical significance. American Journalism, 32(3), 258-281. doi:10.1080/08821127.2015.1064681
As seen in the advertisement below, Lucky Strikes cigarettes emphasized the event and celebrated the freedom of women to smoke anywhere. The theme of equality for women was revisited in the Virginia Slims advertising of the 1965's-1980's.
Whatever worked, publicity stunts, advertising or product placement in movies and television, cigarettes consumption took off after the 1920's, largely through increased sales to women. Cigarette manufacturers also heavily promoted their product in movies and television.