More vintgage ads: cigarette ads that would’ve worked on me.
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.
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