7/31/2019 Stanford researchers' cigarette ad collection reveals how big tobacco targets young women and girls

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/stanford-researchers-cigarette-ad-collection-reveals-how-big-tobacco-targets 1/5

If the nearly ten billion dollars spent by the

tobacco industry in 2008 to encourage Americans

to smoke doesn’t shock you, perhaps the story

the ads tell will. It is a story that has special

relevance for young women and teenage girls

and feminists of all ages.

For nearly 100 years, cigarette companies have

worked hard to attract female customers, and

they have been effective. In 2008, 18.3 percent of

women (that’s 21.1 million of them) smoked.

Research by Stanford scholars Dr. Robert Jackler

and Laurie Jackler presented at the Clayman

Institute for Gender Research shows how

tobacco companies have tailored their marketing

campaigns to appeal to young women. Cigarette

advertising has suggested that smoking will make

women thinner, more self-confident and

independent, and more fashionable,

sophisticated, and cool. These tricks of the

tobacco trade have remained surprisingly consistent despite changing beliefs about smoking and

women’s rights.

Cigarette smoking and women’s rightsOver the past six years, the husband and wife duo has amassed a collection of nearly 15,000 cigarette

advertisements and worked to analyze the themes contained in them. The ads show that the story of

women and tobacco is enmeshed with the story of women’s rights. Smoking was largely a male

preserve until the World War I era. Women appeared in tobacco advertisements prior to this time, but

Stanford researchers’ cigarette ad collection reveals how bigtobacco targets women and adolescent girls 

by Natalie Marine-Street on Thursday, April 26, 2012 - 12:55pm  

Lucky Cigarette ad (source: SRITA) 

7/31/2019 Stanford researchers' cigarette ad collection reveals how big tobacco targets young women and girls

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/stanford-researchers-cigarette-ad-collection-reveals-how-big-tobacco-targets 2/5

 they were depicted as serving cigarettes to men, and their fashionable and often exoticized images

were designed to appeal to men. This matched a cultural attitude towards women’s smoking that linked

it with loose sexual morality and even prostitution. During World War I, however, as women grew more

assertive and visible in public life, ads targeting women as smokers began to appear.

By the mid-1920s, market-seeking tobacco companies set out more purposefully to attract womensmokers. They sensed a change in cultural attitudes and a reduced threat from prohibitionist forces thatwould outlaw smoking along with alcohol. To vanquish remaining cultural taboos, they appropriated

individualist and feminist messages and presented smoking as a way for women to demonstrate theirliberation from confining traditions. In an ironic echo of the giant suffrage parades of the prior decade,one enterprising company marched cigarette-smoking women in flapper-style dress down New York’s5

thAvenue. They called the cigarettes the women’s “torches of freedom.”

The Jackler’s exhibit also shows that for nearly a

century the cigarette industry has lured women by

equating smoking with thinness. When the young

flappers of the 1920s embraced a slimmer and less-

confined bodily ideal, the cigarette companies

followed suit. Ads suggested that smoking would

make women thin or allow them to avoid bulkierfigures as they aged. One company’s popular

slogan urged women to “Reach for a Lucky Instead

of a Sweet.” In the 1970s companies created new

women’s cigarettes with names such as “Slims” and

“Thins” which today have become the even more

anorexic “Superslims.” Says Robert Jackler, “In

2012, women-targeted cigarette brands are almost

universally promoted as slender, thin, slim, lean, or

light. Some brands have even gone so far as to

recommend ‘cigarette diets.’”

While it may be tempting to dismiss these

campaigns as quaint Americana from the days

before everyone knew better, the Jacklers warn that we should think again. They show earlier ads

alongside more contemporary ones to demonstrate the persistence and adaptability of marketing

themes directed at women. Tobacco companies continued, for example, to co-opt messages about

women’s empowerment throughout the twentieth century. The Phillip Morris Company developed

Virginia Slims cigarettes to appeal to women, and their “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” advertising

campaign coincided with the emergence of second wave feminism in the late 1960s. In the mid-1990s,the brand used “It’s a Woman Thing” as a slogan, and more recently adopted the tagline “Find Your

Voice.” Cigarette ads often feature women smoking together like “sisters” or proclaiming their

individuality and their independence from, or even dominance over, men.

Virginia Slims Ad (source: SRITA)

7/31/2019 Stanford researchers' cigarette ad collection reveals how big tobacco targets young women and girls

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/stanford-researchers-cigarette-ad-collection-reveals-how-big-tobacco-targets 3/5

  Educating young people on cigarette ad strategies

Russian Cigarette Ad (Source: SRITA) 

Despite today’s heavier regulation and a decline in

overall domestic tobacco ad spending, the

Jacklers warn against becoming complacent. They

compare the industry to a “chameleon” -- able toadapt its message to the surrounding culture --

and a “many-headed hydra” -- able to bounce

back from regulatory defeats. According to Robert

Jackler, “The industry employs the most talented

advertising professionals which money can buy to

conjure up ever more clever means of ensnaring

teen “starter smokers” to replace those whose

lives were cut short by consuming their deadly

products.” He points out that cigarette companies,

barred from some methods of advertising, are now

turning to retail promotional incentives and socialmedia campaigns to get their message out.

The collection includes photos of point of sale

campaigns at local convenience stores to

document these strategies. One shows cigarettes

dis la ed beside cand racks a lace where

teenagers congregating after school are likely to see them. Other images record recent

promotional efforts seemingly aimed at young women, such as pink-themed and candy-flavored

cigarettes. In 2009 the FDA banned the sale of many flavored cigarettes, but the Jacklers notethat companies continue to push peach, grape, and mint-flavored oral tobacco and mini-cigars

sweetened with honey.

The Jacklers want to educate young people about the tobacco industry’s efforts to target them by

 juxtaposing historic and contemporary ads and pointing out the common themes. Robert Jackler

says, “Young women seeing these images at first think they are a joke. After seeing the old

images of a doctor smoking and today's women targeted ads, typically teens become outraged at

the industry’s attempts to manipulate them.” Working with Stanford Research into the Impact of

Tobacco Advertising (SRITA), they have developed a popular website, made the ads available in

digital form to researchers, and curated a travelling museum exhibit entitled “Not a Cough in a

Carload: Images from the Campaign by the Tobacco Industry to Hide the Hazards of Smoking.”

They have displayed it at universities throughout the country, and circulated a similar exhibit in

Brazil. They are also tapping into the social media rage with their own on-line video entitled

“Behind the Smoke.”

7/31/2019 Stanford researchers' cigarette ad collection reveals how big tobacco targets young women and girls

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/stanford-researchers-cigarette-ad-collection-reveals-how-big-tobacco-targets 4/5

What motivated the Jacklers to amass such acollection? For one, smoking’s hazard towomen: lung cancer is the leading cause ofcancer deaths among women – it surpassedbreast cancer in 1987. The epidemic in lungcancer among women, notes Robert Jackler,began about thirty years after tobacco

companies began targeting women in theiradvertisements. It can be directly attributed tothe industry’s successful conversion of womento smoking through advertising and brandingcampaigns.

But there is a more personal motivation drivingthe project, too. One of those smoking-inducedlung cancer deaths was that of RobertJackler’s mother, Marilyn E. Jackler. He recallsthe “the suffering and loss of dignity” sheendured from lung cancer, and notes, “Shehas been gone some a few years now, but ourpassion to study tobacco advertising,marketing, and promotion has only intensified.“One of the ads in the collection really remindshim of her. It shows an elegant andsophisticated woman who exudes pride in herfemininity, holding a cigarette and exhaling. Itreads, “Believe in Yourself!” 

Activist Hamdiya Cooks (Photo: Paige Parsons) In addition to his work with SRITA, Robert Jackler, is Sewall Professor and Chair of the Department

of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at the Stanford Medical School and a faculty research

fellowat the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Laurie Jackler is a curator, digital artist, andwriter and a member of the SRITA team.

Natalie Marine-Street is a PhD candidate in United States History at Stanford and a writer on the

Clayman Institute for Gender Research student writing team. Her research interests include

women's, business, and consumer history.

Phillip Morris Ad (Source: SRITA) 

7/31/2019 Stanford researchers' cigarette ad collection reveals how big tobacco targets young women and girls

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/stanford-researchers-cigarette-ad-collection-reveals-how-big-tobacco-targets 5/5

 

Susan Burton, Robin Levi and Hamdiya Cooks (Photo: Paige Parsons) 

For more information:Center for Disease Control Data. 

Federal Trade Commission Cigarette Report for 2007

and 2008

Smoking Facts: Women and Tobacco Use 

Founded in 1974, the Clayman Institute for Gender

Research at Stanford University creates knowledge and

seeks to implement change that promotes gender

equality at Stanford, nationally, and internationally.

Copyright 2010 Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.