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Women’s History Month: Smoking

Vanity Fair, 1934, Camel cigarette advertisement from 1934

Vanity fair., 1934, Camel cigarette advertisement from 1934

The Libraries' trade literature collection offers up another glimpse of women and their role in commerce and society with this 1934 advertisement for Camel cigarettes in Vanity Fair magazine.

What could be more fashionable than a smoke to "relieve fatigue and irritability." She was too tired to go out on her date, even with the lovely corsage until she got a "lift"

It wasn't until the 1950s that studies began to be published linking smoking with lung cancer. the addictive qualities of smoking are still being studied, but there is evidence that tobacco addiction is not all that different from addiction to "harder" drugs such as cocaine or heroin.

Little did our fashionable lady know that she was starting a habit of a lifetime that might just shorten her life.—Elizabeth Periale

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