Cigarette Ads Were Once Based on Women Being "Better" Than Men
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Times really were different in the ’60s and ’70s. Not only was it still cool to smoke back then, but it was also cool to pin your cigarette ad campaign on women’s lib.
The Atlantic has a retrospective on women-targeted cigarette advertising from the late-1960s through the 1990s. It starts off with Virginia Slims ads featuring slogans like this: “We make Virginia Slims especially for women because they are biologically superior to men.” Burn! There was also a cigarette brand called Eve, which told women, “There’s a little Eve in all of us,” equating smoking with independence and sexual freedom.