One of my favorite podcasts recently did a couple of episodes about the cigarette industry's impact on the modern world. Not the effect of the cigarettes themselves, but of some rather unexpected effects on our daily lives. The podcast is called "Behind the Bastards" and is hosted by Robert Evans, a tough and courageous journalist who is has reported from the front lines of many conflicts, including the Iraq War, and has done a significant amount of reporting about the current rise of far-right armed groups in the United States. Evans has a rather left-leaning approach and a slightly eccentric style, but I really enjoy his style. Furthermore, his podcast "Behind the Bastards" is one of my favorites, providing in-depth and well-researched chronicles about the lives of not-so-good people and the stuff that they did to be called "Bastards". Very entertaining and informative, but not for everyone. Anyway, there were a few parts from those two episodes that I wanted to share.
First - I hadn't realized that one of my childhood hobbies, would probably have gotten me hooked on cigarettes. Sounds pretty bad, but it was a fairly innocuous collection - hockey cards. Yep. The idea was to attract younger buyers, specifically targeting the young male audience. Each pack contained trading cards with baseball players, pin-up girls, etc (and regularly introduced new categories) to convince the youth to continue buying new more to complete sets. And the collectable hockey cards I had? They're a decedent of that sales strategy, luckily sans nicotine.
Next up: a better integration of men and women. We all know about Rosie the Riveter and how the the world wars did their part in incorporating women into the workforce. But cigarettes helped social integration. The traditional after meal cigarette at social gatherings helped the women join, since they were not as welcome while it had been cigars. Look at the little cancer sticks, democratizing lung cancer and making everyone welcome.
Finally, the idea of thin models owes quite a lot to cigarettes. Even aside from the "Cigarette Diets" (probably not approved by modern dieticians), big tobacco helped push the skinny narrative. Lucky Strikes even had a campaign, pushing women to "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet". Funnily enough, candy had helped kids get into smoking with their chocolate cigarettes. Although, to be fair, as a child I'd also pretended to smoke on plenty of occasions, except I used baby carrots, Gen Z's version of the once popular snack.
These are only a couple brief notes regarding this topic. It's frankly amazing how much of what we consider normal in day-to-day life stems from potentially problematic sources, but was sanitized by the decades.
If you do decide to try listening, the episodes in question are linked below:
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