Smoking Women

Will they stop at nothing? Could they be any more indiscriminate? Rather than going out of business, tobacco companies continue to sell cigarettes, but it gets even worse. According to a recent study from Harvard University's School of Public Health, cigarette manufacturers led a determined effort to sell cigarettes ...to WOMEN!.
This groundbreaking discovery was made after researchers sifted through seven million industry documents made public following the 1998 tobacco settlement. They found that tobacco companies tried to make cigarettes more appealing to women. Alterations of the size, shape, flavor, and packaging were some of the ideas considered. Those of us outside of academia respond with a resounding, "Duh!" Perhaps some researchers need to get out of the library a little more often.
This is an example of a great problem in higher education today: over-specialization. There is such a vast reserve of knowledge within any discipline, that it is nearly impossible for a student to be proficient in more than one. Hence, Marketing is a foreign language to Medical Students. Political Science Majors have no concept of Business or Economics. Statisticians can't get a date.
Remember first that the tobacco industry, despite the negative health aspect, is still a legal industry. It is a big mistake to judge whether a salesperson is decent and upright, based on the morality of their product. We often forget this universal truth: that salespeople are always sleazy. Whether they are selling health insurance, or crack; soliciting donations for a charity, or selling timeshares; the MO of a salesperson is always the same: appealing to your weaker nature in order to earn themselves a generous commission on a transaction.
Fragrances and flavors have long been altered to appeal to the gentler sex. Tab® was the first diet soda produced by the Coca-Cola® company, and I think it was no accident that the color of the can was pink, and the flavor not as bitter as their flagship product, Coke®. Lite beer and wine coolers were made for those who found the taste of regular beer too overwhelming.
Whereas the Harvard study finds that a slimmer cigarette would be associated with a health benefit, it is also possible that it was designed fit more comfortably in a woman's hand. It is for this reason that pink razors are also molded to fit women more ergonomically.
Before WW II, tobacco was almost exclusively a men's product. When women went to work in the factories, they also learned the benefit of nicotine for making the mind alert, and repetitious labor seem a little more tolerable. By the fifties women were smoking in greater numbers than ever before. Cigarette manufacturers seized on this growing demographic by finding ways to pitch cigarettes to women. And it wasn't surreptitious either.
There was nothing more bold than the Virginia Slims® marketing campaign, which capitalized on the new fad that was sweeping the country, called feminism. The ads contrasted the differing societal impressions of women smoking between the 19th and 20th centuries They depicted what used to happen to women when they tried to enjoy a cigarette, and the triumph of finally having a brand of their very own. Women were congratulated on this success with the song, "You've Come a Long Way Baby! (To get where you've got to today! You've got your own cigarette now baby! You've come a long long way!)"
The ad captured the mood of early days of feminism, back when it was still considered cute. I'm quite certain that modern feminists would find the campaign demeaning. Never before in the history of any war, was liberation honored by calling the victors "Baby!" (Who's a big girl now?) If cigarette advertising was still legal, women's protests would have insured this commercial had been pulled decades ago.
Cigarette manufacturers, whose long history of using cowboys and race cars to market their product to one gender, had recognized that the other half of America could enjoy smoking too. But if feminists were really serious about equality, they really should have congratulated the tobacco companies for this appeal to diversity. I believe they should also go after the Harvard School of Public Health, for assuming that women are somehow more susceptible to marketing and advertising. That this study was even conducted, suggests a specific weakness among the female demographic, and a need for concentrated regulation to protect the particularly vulnerable.
Virginia Slims®, though still a popular brand, never quite delivered on the promise of modernity, sophistication, and liberation. In truth, they are the cigarette found most often in mobile home courts, and in raids of meth labs. As is the case with all television marketing, shiny promises of a new utopian life, that can be purchased for just a couple bucks, are rarely kept. Most of us know that, regardless of our gender.