Women
- In 1968, Philip Morris launched its Virginia Slims cigarette brand with the slogan, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” The name underscored the pressure on women to be thin, and the slogan associated smoking with the women’s liberation movement. In 1971, the company created the Virginia Slims Women’s Tennis Circuit, telecasts of which circumvented the TV ban on cigarette advertising. Over the next 25 years, athletes as young as 14 were shown playing their matches amid dozens of courtside banners for Virginia Slims.
- By 1985, lung cancer had surpassed breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer deaths among U.S. women, a fact that went virtually unreported in women’s magazines, nearly all of which continued to accept cigarette advertising. Most still do.
Learn more about the targeting of women by the tobacco industry in our exhibition…
“Born gentle…”
Magazine advertisement by Philip Morris Inc. for Philip Morris cigarettes
1956
“You’ve come a long way, baby.”
Advertisement by Philip Morris, Inc. for Virginia Slims cigarettes
Glamour
February, 1978
“DAKOTA. WHERE SMOOTH COMES EASY.”
Advertisement by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company
Sports Illustrated
February 4, 1991
“Personal Vice Area”
Ann Telnaes of King Features Syndicate
January 23, 2003
“Even though I would do more cartoons criticizing the tobacco companies and their ties to Congress, I’ve decided I’m quite against all this legislating smoking in public, like banning it in bars (as in New York City). Either ban tobacco altogether or stop this nonsense.”
— Ann Telnaes
“Women smoking deaths have doubled…”
“Finally, the attention is off us targeting kids.”
Gary Markstein
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
2001
“Cigarette smokers inhale, but tobacco execs suck.”
— Gary Markstein
“North Dakota, South Dakota”
Jimmy Margulies, The Record (New Jersey)
The Houston Post
1990
“By the time this cartoon was drawn, the dangers of smoking were very well documented, and common knowledge to everyone. So the fact that a tobacco company would actually target a product to young women in their child-bearing years was just too ridiculously outrageous to let pass.”
— Jimmy Margulies
Cigarettes & Women
Tract by W. D. Herrstrom about the health effects of cigarette smoking in women
Circa 1930
“Every 3 1/2 minutes a woman dies from smoking.”
“Every 3 days a tobacco farmer gets a subsidy check from the government.”
Randy Bish
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Circa 2000
“Smoking continues to take a heavy toll on women”
Article by Denise Grady of The New York Times
The Tuscaloosa News
March 28, 2001