In
1908, the New York City Board of Aldermen unanimously passed an ordinance that
prohibited smoking by women in public.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_smoking#:~:text=In%201929%20Edward%20Bernays%20decided%20to%20pay%20women,as%20in%20the%20privacy%20of%20their%20own%20homes.
In the early part of the 20th century, the anti-tobacco
movement was aimed primarily at women and children. Smoking was considered a dirty habit and
smoking by women was seriously frowned upon by society. As the century
progressed, so did women's desire for equality.
The suffrage
movement gave many women a sense of entitlement and freedom and
the tobacco industry took advantage of the marketing opportunity. Tobacco
companies began marketing cigarettes to appeal to women during the burgeoning
women's movement of the 1920s.
"Torches of Freedom"
was a phrase used to encourage women's smoking by exploiting women's
aspirations for a better life during the early twentieth century first-wave feminism in
the United States.
Cigarettes were
described as symbols of emancipation and equality with men. The term was first
used by psychoanalyst A. A. Brill when
describing the natural desire for women to smoke and was used by Edward Bernays to encourage women to
smoke in public despite social taboos. The American Tobacco Company began
targeting women with its ads for Lucky Strikes. Lucky Strike sought to give
women the reasons they should be smoking Luckies. They employed ads featuring
prominent women, such as Amelia Earhart, and appealed to the vanity of
women by promising slimming effects. Most of the ads also conveyed a carefree
and confident image of women that would appeal to the modern woman of the
1920s.
The ads grew more extravagant with paid celebrity
testimonials and far-reaching claims of how Lucky Strikes could improve your
life. Their most aggressive campaign directly challenged the candy industry by
urging women to "reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet". These
aggressive campaigns paid off making Lucky Strike the most smoked brand within
a decade.
Other companies followed the successful ad campaigns of
the American Tobacco Company with their own versions. The Phillip Morris
Company introduced Marlboro cigarettes in 1925. Marlboros were advertised as
being as "mild as May" and featured elegant ivory tips that appealed
to women. Other brands offered similar ads appealing to a woman's sense of
beauty and style and made cigarettes an alluring part of many women's lives.
(In view of the tough
image of the Marlboro Man, you would probably be surprised at the fact that
Marlboro was originally introduced (in 1926) as a woman’s cigarette. The
advertising theme for the cigarette was the less than inspiring “mild as May”campaign, and the brand faltered repeatedly for the next 30
years.)
The ads linking vanity and beauty were quite women
specific and did exactly what they were supposed to do. Fear of weight gain
remains a chief reason women continue to smoke. The ad campaigns successfully
promoted cigarettes as a product possessing specific qualities including
equality, autonomy, glamour, and beauty.
In 1929 Edward Bernays decided to pay women to smoke their
"torches of freedom"
as they walked in the Easter Sunday Parade in
New York. This was a shock because until that time, women were only permitted
to smoke in certain places such as in the privacy of their own homes. He was
very careful when picking women to march because, "while they should be
good looking, they should not look too model-y"; and he hired his own
photographers to make sure that good pictures were taken and then published
around the world. Ruth Hale called
for women to join in the march saying, "Women! Light another torch of
freedom! Fight another sex taboo!"
The late 1950s and early 1960s brought about a new
onslaught of cigarette brands. Each new brand of cigarette introduced during
this time advertised its unique benefits. The major new innovation in tobacco
marketing was the filtered cigarette. Filters made cigarettes less harsh to
smoke and offered the appearance of removing potentially harmful particles. The
1950s began the rebranding of Marlboros from an elite cigarette to an
everyman's cigarette and also saw the introduction of strong Marlboro men, such
as athletes, and more famously cowboys. This change in Marlboro branding
meant Philip Morris was lacking a cigarette aimed at women.
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2011/10/marlboro-man.html
The 1950's also began a boom in advertising for tobacco
companies. Ads featuring prominent movie and television stars became commonplace
and tobacco companies also began sponsoring television shows, game shows, and
other widespread media. One of the most popular was Philip Morris's sponsorship
of the I Love Lucy show.
The opener featured the two stars of the show with a giant pack of Philip
Morris cigarettes. The show Your Hit Parade was proudly sponsored
by American Tobacco's Lucky Strike brand.
In 1965, it was reported that 33.9% of women were smoking. Virginia Slims came on the market in
1968, and used the catch phrase "You’ve come a long way baby." This
was the first cigarette to be marketed solely as a woman's cigarette. The
cigarettes were longer, slimmer, and overall more elegant and feminine. The ads
depicted photos of glamorous women set against photos of women doing mundane
tasks such as laundry or housework. 1970 saw the release of Liggett &
Myers Tobacco Company's entry into women specific cigarettes, Eve. Eve cigarettes were decidedly
more feminine than Virginia Slims. Eve featured flowers or other feminine
motifs on both the packaging and the cigarette themselves.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=0bgDd0VC&id=452906F06AACFB389744CD1C1C5EB0DB184D264D&thid=OIP.0bgDd0VCjtGxSsz8qFOsMgHaE7&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fflashbak.com%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2f2016%2f10%2f1988-VS1.jpg&exph=1583&expw=2375&q=you%27ve+come+a+long+way+baby&simid=608048819821283151&ck=EB92E7759368A5BA6EBE9D28DB8D40BA&selectedIndex=12&FORM=IRPRST&ajaxhist=0
The most tangible result of the suffrage movement, apart from
the ability to smoke in public, was the passage of the 19th
amendment on August 18, 1920, which gave women the right to vote. Ironically,
though, the first woman elected to office in America was Jeannette Rankin, who
was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives on November 7, 1916, two years
after her home state of Montana became the first state in the country to allow
women to vote.
On the national level, the first woman to be elected to the Senate
was Hattie
Ophelia Wyatt Caraway, a Democrat from Arkansas, who became the first woman to be
elected to the U.S. Senate. Caraway, born near Bakerville, Tennessee, had been appointed to the Senate two
months earlier to fill the vacancy left by her late husband, Thaddeus Horatio
Caraway. Caraway was preceded in the Senate by Rebecca Latimer Felton, who was
appointed in 1922 to fill a vacancy but never ran for election.
In 1984, the Democratic Party was trying to defeat Ronald
Reagan, a popular incumbent. Their standard bearer that year was Walter Mondale,
and he chose Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in order to capture more of
the woman’s vote. Sadly, the Democrats lost in a landslide to Reagan. The only
state that Mondale carried was his home state of Minnesota, but he also carried
the District of Columbia.
Hillary Clinton was the First Lady to the governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton,, and she later became the First Lady of the country when he became
president.
After Bill Clinton finished his second term, Hillary was elected as the first
female senator from
New York. She was re-elected in
2006 and chaired the Senate Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee from 2003 to
2007. Emboldened by her success, she decided to run
for president in 2008, but lost in the primary elections to Barack Obama,, who
wisely chose to make her Secretary of State. During her time in that office,
she visited more countries than any Secretary of State in history.
Armed
with impressive credentials, she decided to run for president again in 2016,
and had a 12 point lead in the polls over Donald Trump on October 23,2016. In
the end, she beat Trump by 3,000,000 votes, but lost to him in the electoral
college. Her book, “What Happened?” summarizes the things that went wrong, but
the two main factors were Russian interference, and James Comey’s letter to
Congress 11 days before the election.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton
On May
17, 1954, in a landmark decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of
Topeka, Kansas, the U.S. Supreme Court declared state laws establishing
separate public schools for students of different races to be unconstitutional.
The decision dismantled the legal framework for racial segregation in public
schools and Jim Crow laws, which limited the rights of African Americans,
particularly in the South.
https://www.nps.gov/articles/brown-v-board-of-education.htm
Many states in the south were slow to comply with the new decision.
The “Little Rock 9” were the first black students to attend a white school in
Little Rock, and Ruby Bridges was the first black student to go to a white
school in Louisiana, in 1960.
Bridges
and her mother were escorted to school by four federal
marshals during the first day that Bridges attended William
Frantz Elementary. In the following days of that year, federal marshals
continued to escort Bridges, though her mom stayed behind to take care of her
younger siblings.
In
1964, she became the subject of a painting by Norman Rockwell, titled “The
Problem We All Live With.
The Bridges family suffered for their
decision to send her to William Frantz Elementary: her father lost his job as a
gas station attendant, the grocery store the family shopped at would no
longer let them shop there; her grandparents, who were sharecroppers in
Mississippi, were turned off their land; and Abon and Lucille Bridges (her
mother and father) separated. Bridges has noted that many others in the
community, both black and white, showed support in a variety of ways. Some
white families continued to send their children to Frantz despite the protests,
a neighbor provided her father with a new job, and local people babysat,
watched the house as protectors, and walked behind the federal marshals' car on
the trips to school. It was not until Bridges was an adult that she learned
that the immaculate clothing she wore to school in those first weeks at Frantz
was sent to her family by a relative of Dr. Coles. Bridges says her family
could never have afforded the dresses, socks, and shoes that are documented in
photographs of her escort by U.S. Marshals to and from the school.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Bridges
Trump didn’t win a majority of the women vote in
2016. He received 41%, while 54% of women voted for Hillary Clinton,
according to exit poll data conducted by Edison Research. Trump, however, did
garner 52% of white women votes. Overall, he won 52% of votes by men
and 62% of votes by white men, exit poll data suggests.
After Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination, he
quickly proclaimed that he would choose a woman as his running mate. Although
several of his primary opponents would have been a good choice, he knew that
choosing a woman of color would give him a two-fold advantage, so his selection
of Kamala Harris was an easy choice – as well as a wise move.
After this week, Kamala Harris became the first
woman elected to the office of vice president. However, as she proclaimed yesterday
evening, she will not be the last.
You’ve come a long way, baby.
