If you’re a smoker, regardless of whether it’s e-cigs or regular, tabacco or the best CBD e-liquid oil, you’ve probably heard of the torches of freedom expression. In this article, we’re going to dive deeper into this topic, so that even those who have never heard the expression.
Smoking Seen as Unsuitable for Women
As you may know, the past was filled with prohibitions for women. They used to not be allowed to do a great deal of things, and one of those things was smoking. In fact, women who did smoke before the twentieth century used to be seen either as prostitutes or as degraded in some other way. In fact, in some places, there were laws in place specifically for the purpose of prohibiting women to smoke.
Enter World War I
When World War I came about, the structure of society suffered a profound change, as women had to take up the jobs men used to do before going to war. This changed everything, and as the lines between what was considered to be appropriate for women blurred, more and more topics were brought into question, smoking being one of them.
The American Tobacco Company
George Washington Hill was the president of the American Tabacco Company in 1928. Make no mistake; he was not a feminist. However, he was a good businessman who knew who to grab onto opportunities when they arose. Seeing the change that World War I brought, he hired Edward Bernays to somehow convince women to smoke, making smoking look like an integral part of their fight for equality.
Back then, public relations didn’t really exist, and Bernays was in fact credited with having invented it.
The First PR Campaign
During the Easter Parade, on March 31, 1929, Bernays’ secretary, Bertha Hunt lit a Lucky Strike cigarette right in the middle of a crowded street. Since the press had been warned about it, the moment was highlighted a great deal more than it would have been otherwise. The word slowly got out that smoking was a form of liberation for women, which is how they got to be known as “torches of freedom”.
Bertha claimed that she got the idea while she was out and an unknown man asked her to stop smoking because it make him feel embarrassed. On the 1st of April that same year, The New York Times ran an article with the title “Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of Freedom.”
More Ladies Took Charge
When seeing Hunt smoke, 10 more women started following her lead by smoking. The days that came after, Bernays made sure to talk of smoking as if it were a form of liberation.
Special attention was also paid to teaching women how to smoke, since some had said that women don’t even know how to engage in this act. Because cigarette companies didn’t want women to be ridiculed for smoking, they created ads, and even lecture series teaching them how to do it correctly.
From 1923 to 1929, sales for cigarettes doubled, which meant that Bernays had more than earned his huge check of $25, 000. In fact, the association between Hill and Bernays continued for 8 years, driving sales for cigarettes even higher.
New Life Into the Campaign
During the 1990s, the torches of freedom idea saw a real resurgence as companies started to advertise smoking around the world, since American market was becoming more and more difficult, due to restrictions to smoking ads.
The connection between cigarettes and freedom was used especially in places where women were trying to obtain more equality. They also made sure to tailor the images they used to the “needs” of each specific country. For instance, in Spain, they used ads of women in masculine jobs. Due to this, smoking rates saw a major increase from 17% during 1978, to 27% in 1997.
In Japan, the smoking rates among women increased from 10.5% in 1986 to 23.3% in 1999, while in Germany, the rates increased from 27% in 1993 to 47% in 1997 for women with ages between 12 and 25.
Smoking for women was a touchy topic in the past, when gender roles were very well and rigidly defined. With the emergence of World War I, as these gender roles became more blurred, women started to ask for more rights. It was during this time that Bernays created his “torches of freedom” campaign, successfully capitalizing on the social tumult that was going on. It was thanks to him that cigarettes sales went up, as more and more women used smoking as a way for revolting against the rules of society. As time passed, and smoking ads started to be more and more restricted in the US, cigarettes companies looked to the rest of the world for opportunities, which is how the same campaign was resurrected later in the century.