So I had just got done with my Politics of Sex discussion and was walking to my next class, when I lit up a cigarette. The topic of sex was fresh on my mind, so I started thinking about sex and cigarettes. I actually wrote a paper about the history of Marlboros last semester, so I started to make some connections about sex and cigarettes that I hadn't really noticed before.
Marlboro advertisements were originally aimed towards women, claiming it was "Mild as May". The original filters for Marlboro cigarettes were actually pink too, even more aimed towards the stereotypical woman.
Then Marlboro began to struggle because women weren't buying enough cigarettes, so they went under. They came back in the 1950's with a new target; The manly man. They created the Marlboro man, he was originally just any man with a tattoo (sailors, cowboys, etc.) but eventually became the Marlboro Cowboy after a lot of success. This is what we all know and remember today, even with tobacco advertisement ban. Today, some people even call Marlboro cigarettes the "Cowboy Killer".
Here's a link showing a sailor too.
This is a really interesting concept. I have heard of the Marlboro cowboy but I didn't know that the cigarette was originally aimed at women. Personally, I don't smoke and probably never will, but think that it would be really cool to have a cigarette that was pink. Another thing that caught my attention about this post was how on the commercial the man keeps repeating that city boys always want to be country boys and country boys always want to be city boys, but at the end he says something along the lines of being fine with who he was. It shows his confidence and suggests that the cigarette gives him this confidence to be a true man. A true man is depicted as a man in the wild, around dangerous and unpredictable animals. Cigarettes can be your friend when you're alone in the wilderness.