I’ve never been into cigarettes. I spent so much of my childhood scheming to get my dad to stop smoking that by the time I was at all interested in smoking myself, I felt I’d be too much of a hypocrite if I started. Right this moment, however, I want a cigarette.

Why? Well, maybe because I was just reading a magazine from 1972. It’s a copy of LIFE I bought at a thrift store some months ago. One of the most noticeable things in it is the fact that there’s a cigarette ad on almost every other page. Print cigarette ads were curbed the following year and completely ceased to exist in 1995. And you know what? Thank god! Because, if they started rerunning some of these old ads, I’d be a goner.

(NB: The scanner I’m using is too small for the pages and I’m just not up to scanning twice, cutting pasting, etc. So just deal. Please.)

Here’s the first one I saw:

Indeed, it is good! Is it wrong that this looks so good to me? Nice looking male hand? I like male hands! Ooh, I also like coffee. And Julie Christie-cum-Cleopatra eye makeup. And the turtleneck! Yes! Gimme! This ad is surely suggesting that women are subordinate to men: that we are on a lower level. And that that’s a level that’s a good height for…now I really am I reading too much into this. Maybe it’s the cup. It’s a great looking cup.

This one has a similar feel—girl grateful and peaceful after a good roll in the hay. Or something.

Again, I’m drawn to the cup. I love coffee! Maybe a cigarette would make me love coffee even more? Or yellow table mats? (Newspapers! Look! A real newspaper!) I don’t know. I just want to be this girl, even if it means I’d be about 68 by now.

This one is how I imagine love. Love is a place with air and trees. And green grass. And cool vintage orange tops. Who lives in this place? Why a man with a gold watch and a cigarette, of course. Can I interest you in some binoculars?

You can’t knock good design. I think I had a pair of pants with this pattern on it when I was a teenager. They were awesome. If they had this poster in Williamsburg, the hipsters would be ALL OVER that shiz. They’d be buying these packs just to turn them into iPhone cases.

Stay tuned tomorrow for ashtray porn!