Cigarettes

“As Richard Klein has pointed out, the first women to be publicly identified with cigarettes were those who were paid to stage their sexuality: prostitutes, actresses, dancers. The act of lighting a cigarette signaled a certain sexual openness; women who did so violated traditional roles by actively giving themselves pleasure instead of either avoiding it or passively receiving it. After about 1890 or so, when a women dangled a cigarette, it did not necessarily mean she was a prostitute, but it did suggest that she might be available – although on her own terms” (Tate, 98). . . . By the time the United States entered the war [WWI], then, two contradictory trends were evident: more women were smoking, and they were encountering greater and greater resistance. The war intensified both trends” (104).