Wrap Your Lips Around It
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Other times it’s a big fat phallic symbol. Just ask this guy. Ditto for cigarettes.
No, there will be no whining today, only a merry trip down a smoky memory lane.
I love the coy innuendo of this ad—it’s three kinds of wrong, all of it delicious.
Yeah, I know, the tobacco industry is too easy a target—they’re everyone’s favorite dead horse. I don’t care. I had a thing for old ads long before Mad Man. Advertising is not about selling a product, but about selling an image. It is designed to make you believe that using the product will make you respectable/cool/ruggedly handsome/etc.
Of course it’s easy to see their falseness from the distance of a couple of decades, and laugh. Today’s advertising isn’t any less ridiculous, though. The industry has always had an unstoppable ability to use whatever going on in the world at the time to its advantage. The “You Came A Long Way, Baby” Virginia Slims ads linking smoking to the feminist movement look as scary as they do clumsy today.
The truth is though, smoking used to be sexy. Bogey and Bacall did it, and so did Marlene Dietrich. And they looked damn hot doing it. I like old movies, and so I’ve seen plenty of smoke curl from lightly parted lips, or dames blow smoke into the faces of tough guys.
In my first book, Hanging Loose, Nate, the narrator, shares my obsession with Classic Hollywood. He even paraphrases a line from Now Voyager. It’s probably one of the best “bad” movies ever made.
Bette Davis plays an ugly-duckling spinster living with her overbearing mother. Her only act of rebellion is smoking in secret. She manages to spend time away from her mother, and it boosts her self-confidence. She meets the married Paul Henreid and they fall in love. The also light up a lot—at this point cigarettes become a substitute for all the sex they’re not having. There’s some melodrama, and then they end up together. Sort of. The times being what they are, it has to be a platonic relationship. In the final scene they stand in a window and Bette utters one of the corniest lines in film history: Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.
Paul Henreid (Jerry) lights up two cigarettes and hands one to her. Ssssmoking!
It would’ve been healthier if they’d chucked the ciggies and got down to bonking, but it would’ve lacked a certain cinematic finesse, I must admit.
So what do you think, lung cancer and emphysema aside, is smoking sexy or not?
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Check back on Friday for a giveaway of Hanging Loose, which has no smoking—well, not of tobacco, anyway—but plenty of bonking.
Lou Harper
Under a prickly, cynical surface Lou Harper is an incorrigible romantic. Her love affair with the written word started at a tender age. There was never a time when stories weren’t romping around in her head. She is currently embroiled in a ruinous romance with adjectives. In her free time Lou stalks deviant words and feral narratives.
Lou’s favorite animal is the hedgehog. She likes nature, books, movies, photography, and good food. She has a temper and mood swings.
Lou has misspent most of her life in parts of Europe and the US, but is now firmly settled in Los Angeles and worships the sun. However, she thinks the ocean smells funny. Lou is a loner, a misfit, and a happy drunk.
Visit louharper.com
Heidi Cullinan
Evaine
Marie Sexton
Shawny
There is still nothing sexier than a cowboy with his stetson and chaps and smoking a square.
Marlboro Man!!!
Yup, ruggedly handsome goes well with tobacco. I can picture him: stubbles on his face, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, and his eyes squinting at the horizon.
I don’t find anything about cigarettes or chewing tobacco sexy at all, but a pipe or cigar in a photo-shoot like those at CofP can bring my heart-rate right up. In real life, not so much.
I don’t care much for cigars–they stink–but a pipe makes a man seem smart and sophisticated. Plus pipe tobacco smells nice.
I did a post recently on my blog about smoking in books. Most of us, while not interested in smoking ourselves have loved some smokers in fiction. I totally adore Jordan Castillo Price’s Crash in Striking Sparks, but in reality I’d probably gag on the smell. A few confessed to taking a puff themselves.
I actually wrote a smoker in my last short freebie and it didn’t go over that well with a few readers, but smokers need love too.
Some smoking pictures look so hot and part of that may stem from being born in a time when smoking was still considered glamorous and not a filthy habit.
I never picked up the habit (tried, but it didn’t appeal), but I’ve seen tons of movies as a child with people smoking. There’s a certain je ne sais quoi to it. At least on the screen.
While I am Very anti – Smoking I loved this article.
Oh, I’m totally anti-smoking too, but indulge in it on the screen is harmless. Especially in old movies.
My opinion is colored by the fact that my grandparents (in fact MOST of my relatives on my dad’s side) smoked and died from smoking-related health issues, and the fact that even then, being around cigarette smoke, or people who smell of it, gives me migraines. Which has made parts of my relationship with my husband infinitely hard — specifically when he came home from his first deployment a smoker. He’s gonna have to give it up this time; I can’t take the constant headaches anymore.
I am a smoker and realize that by admitting that I leave myself open to heaping helpings of distaste and scorn. You’ve seen the ads and old movies so you have some idea of what it was like when I started down this road. I wish I hadn’t but quitting is so hard, nearly impossible. I just don’t care anymore, gotta die someway.
Have you tried the meds? My aunt took Chantix I think for a time and said it totally killed the desire. But they don’t work well for everyone. There is medical help though these days, the good old days of sheer willpower are no more … thank god.
I’m a smoker, too. Funny thing is, I didn’t start smoking until I worked for a hospital.
I actually find pictures of guys smoking sexy. Even before I started smoking, I found it sexy. Especially the Marlboro Man ads. Oh, man, those were hot. Now I get my fix with the “Afternoon Smoke” on CoP. :-p