Camel cigarettes ad on the back cover of "Popular Science," July 1932.
There was a major and organized effort by cigarette manufacturers in the 1930s to market cigarettes to women and normalize the practice. Previously, female smokers were associated with "loose morals," but the tobacco industry, led by figures like Edward Bernays, worked to turn cigarettes into a symbol of female liberation and sophistication.
In 1929, public relations pioneer Edward Bernays, hired by the American Tobacco Company, orchestrated a publicity stunt during New York's Easter Sunday Parade. He paid young, fashionable women to march while openly smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes. The event, framed as a protest against gender inequality, was covered widely by newspapers and repositioned smoking as a symbol of female emancipation and defiance of social taboos. Lucky Strike launched its influential "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet" campaign in 1929. This highly successful ad campaign targeted women's insecurities about weight by promoting cigarettes as a way to stay slender. This approach led to a 300% increase in Lucky Strike sales in the first year alone.
During the Great Depression, ads for cigarette brands like Lucky Strike, Chesterfield, and Camel portrayed glamorous, wealthy women in luxurious settings. The intention was to allow average women to feel they could adopt some of this sophistication by smoking the same brand.
The intense marketing efforts had a dramatic and tragic long-term impact on women's health. The percentage of women who smoked increased significantly. Women's smoking rates jumped from 5–6% in 1924 to over 12% by 1929. As a direct result of the rise in smoking, lung cancer rates in women also increased. In 1987, lung cancer surpassed breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer death among American women.
[Source: Google Gemini]
Camel cigarettes ad on the back cover of "Popular Science," July 1932.
There was a major and organized effort by cigarette manufacturers in the 1930s to market cigarettes to women and normalize the practice. Previously, female smokers were associated with "loose morals," but the tobacco industry, led by figures like Edward Bernays, worked to turn cigarettes into a symbol of female liberation and sophistication.
In 1929, public relations pioneer Edward Bernays, hired by the American Tobacco Company, orchestrated a publicity stunt during New York's Easter Sunday Parade. He paid young, fashionable women to march while openly smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes. The event, framed as a protest against gender inequality, was covered widely by newspapers and repositioned smoking as a symbol of female emancipation and defiance of social taboos. Lucky Strike launched its influential "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet" campaign in 1929. This highly successful ad campaign targeted women's insecurities about weight by promoting cigarettes as a way to stay slender. This approach led to a 300% increase in Lucky Strike sales in the first year alone.
During the Great Depression, ads for cigarette brands like Lucky Strike, Chesterfield, and Camel portrayed glamorous, wealthy women in luxurious settings. The intention was to allow average women to feel they could adopt some of this sophistication by smoking the same brand.
The intense marketing efforts had a dramatic and tragic long-term impact on women's health. The percentage of women who smoked increased significantly. Women's smoking rates jumped from 5–6% in 1924 to over 12% by 1929. As a direct result of the rise in smoking, lung cancer rates in women also increased. In 1987, lung cancer surpassed breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer death among American women.
[Source: Google Gemini]