Prior to the beginning of the twentieth century, smoking was not a socially acceptable practice for men or women. The "proper" use of tobacco products for men was to chew or use as snuff. Smoking of tobacco was limited to those who were too poor to afford "proper" tobacco products and women of "ill repute."
Despite the many indications of a transition in cultural values, some traditional views linking smoking with immorality still persisted in the early years of this century.
Speaking with vision far beyond his time, Senator Reeds Smoot, on June 10, 1929, introduced an unsuccessful bill in Congress to include tobacco under the provisions of the Food and Drug Act. He said: "Not since the days when public opinion rose up in its might and smote the dangerous drug traffic, not since the days when the vendor of harmful nostrums was swept from our streets, has the country witnessed such an orgy of buncombe, quackery, and downright falsehood and fraud as now marks the current campaign promoted by certain cigaret [sic] manufacturers to create a vast woman and child market for the use of their product.1
Smoking was slowly promoted as a symbol of emancipation and equality for women. A psychoanalyst hired by tobacco companies to provide a theory to go along with these images said, "Some women regard cigarettes as symbols of freedom. More women now do the same work as men do. Many women bear no children; those who do, bear fewer children. Feminine traits are masked. Cigarettes, which are equated with men become torches of freedom."
The prevalence of smoking among women lagged behind that of men for 25 years. As a result, disease incidence in women also lagged behind that in men until recently. Lung cancer became the leading cancer killer of women in 1987 and has remained so since.
1 Ernster VL. Messages for women: a social history of cigarettes smoking and advertising, New York State Journal of Medicine, 1985 (8). |
