Win-Win-Win: "An easy labor, a slim baby, and the Full Flavor of Winstons!"

 

While mushing my way through a ton of bizarre vintage ads to post, this one jumped out at me, causing me utter disbelief. The text said: "Taste isn't the only reason I smoke. People are always telling me that smoking causes low birth weight. Talk about a win-win-win! An easy labor, a slim baby, and the Full Flavor of Winstons!" Below her cheery comment was the slogan, "Winston - when you're smoking for two".This ad seemed to be saying that back in the bad old days, mothers deliberately smoked to have smaller babies which would be easier to pop out. The idea was so extreme that I wondered if the ad had been tampered with, if it was satirical, or a blistering comment on something-or-other.

BUT. . .  then I saw this.

Mothers-to-be smoking for smaller babies

Some women keep smoking through pregnancy just because they want to give birth to a smaller baby, according to British researchers.

By Stephen Adams, Medical Correspondent

3:22PM BST 07 Jul 2011

Even though most women now understand there is “overwhelming evidence” that smoking during pregnancy is harmful to the developing child, they continue to do so, said Professor Nick Macklon of Southampton University.

He told the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) in Stockholm: “It is important that people who believe that a smaller baby means an easier birth take into account the increased risk of complicated deliveries in smokers, as well as the risk of disease later in life which goes with low birth weight.”

"Smoking during pregnancy is not just bad for the mother and baby, but for the adult it will grow into."

He and a team at the university’s department of obstetrics and gynaecology have now produced what he called the first “hard evidence” that women who stopped smoking upon discovery they were pregnant, could protect their unborn children from harm.

The study looked at over 50,000 pregnancies in the Southampton area, analysing the birth weight of the babies and comparing this to self-reported smoking behaviour.

Those who continued to smoke through pregnancy had lower weight babies.

The more women smoked the lighter their babies were: those who smoked more than 10 a day had babies weighing some 11oz (300g) less than the average birth weight from a non-smoking mother, of about 7lb 10oz (3.45kg).

However, those who ceased smoking at about the time they conceived were just as likely to give birth to a normal weight baby as those who had never smoked.

He said: “We can now give couples hard evidence that making the effort to stop smoking in the periconceptional will be beneficial for their baby.

“Stopping smoking can ameliorate these detrimental effects.”

This could help change behaviour among smoking mothers, which he said had hardly changed in Britain over the last decade.

Prof Macklon explained that smoking during pregnancy “affects the transportation of nutrients, especially oxygen, across the placenta”.

It was also “reasonable to assume” that some of the 4,000 or so toxins in cigarettes were harmful to foetuses.

Note that in spite of the provocative headline, this article does not come right out and directly state that mothers smoke because they want to have smaller babies: “It is important that people who believe that a smaller baby means an easier birth take into account the increased risk of complicated deliveries in smokers." The message is in there somewhere, of course, but it's politically incorrect (or something - or violates civil rights) to spell it out.

If this is true, then the world is in more trouble than I thought. Next women will guzzle alcohol during pregnancy to deliberately cause fetal alcohol syndrome, because a dumb child is easier to handle than a smart one, won't be so expensive to educate, and won't sass you back.

This Camels ad is particularly insidious. It shows a woman wearing a veil, white gloves and a sort of Jackie Kennedy flared jacket, delicately implying pregnancy. On the opposite page is the usual garbage about "what cigarette do you smoke, Doctor?" The juxtaposition of the ladylike woman "in the family way" with a doctor earnestly pushing his cancer sticks jams these two elements together in people's minds: Doc loves to smoke, particularly Camels, meaning it must be OK; so for the pregnant woman, facing coyly in the other direction, it must also be OK, and for her baby too. Doctors were gods then, and it didn't matter what sort of bilge they promoted or defended.

My scanner is busted, or I'd post another photo of a pregnant woman from The Family of Man, a very tony and pretentious photographic exhibit from the 1950s. I am sure there was no irony or censure in the fact that she very obviously held a cigarette, right out in front of her swollen abdomen, in a way which people probably thought was darling. She had a sort of dreamy, oh-I'm-just-waiting-for-it posture, "but while I'm waiting, I'll just have a smoke". Most of these "candid" shots seem very posed to me, so let's hope she did not subject her baby to second-hand smoke, on top of whatever horrors crossed her placenta from puffing on Camels.

The above ad looks like it should be for Johnson and Johnson or Gerber or Pet Milk, but it's not. Disgusting of Big Tobacco to claim they take just as much pride in their lung-rotting lethal weapon as you do in your newborn infant. It's all the same to them. Birth. Death. Note also (in the text below) how in a hundred-word ad, the brand name appears FOUR times, as does the term "gentle/gentleness" - and what the holy HELL does that have to do with a cigarette?

Born gentle

Proud mothers, please forgive us if we too feel something of the pride of a new parent. For new Philip Morris, today's Philip Morris, is delighting smokers everywhere. Enjoy the gentle pleasure, the fresh unfiltered flavor, of this new cigarette, born gentle, then refined to special gentleness in the making. Ask for new Philip Morris in the smart new package. NEW Philip Morris. . . gentle for modern tastes

BLOGGER'S UPDATE. I got my scanner working, and though this is a bad representation of that photo from The Family of Man, you can see what I mean. The subject's expectant dreaminess is completely wrecked by that cigarette, though I doubt if it had much impact back then, except to make people think: "Lucky her. She'll have an easy labor, a "slim" (read: premature) baby, and her Winstons too. Win-win-win!"

Baby Marlboro

Someone, somewhere, some Mad Man of the 1950s, must have thought this would be a good idea for an ad campaign. And there were at least half a dozen of these ads in the series, so it must have been successful. It's just one of those incredibly dated ideas, like people seeing nothing wrong with mocking gay people and stereotyping people of colour. But why is it that things seem to go forwards and backwards at the same time?

How mild, how mild, how mild can a cigarette be?

Unusually short for a 1950s ad. This came out back when TV was "radio with pictures", and every ad had a chorus singing the jingle. This one is so gorgeous, I can see how people were seduced into smoking. Camels, smoke Camels. . . 

"Mild" was, of course, code for "doesn't cause cancer". Lots of people think there was no public awareness of the link between smoking and fatality back then, but there was. Lots of it. A stern warning had been published in Reader's Digest, not exactly an alarmist publication, and very widely read and trusted. It's just that the cigarette companies systematically drowned out people's fears with outrageously false claims. One could prove that a cigarette was harmless merely by taking the "30-day test". If a woman's throat seemed OK after smoking Camels for 30 days (!), then surely they would do no harm over 30 years.

Logical? Never mind, it raked in the billions. The other thing people believe is that no one smokes any more, that the tobacco companies are limping along and about to  fold. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Smoking is bigger than ever in the third world, where Big Tobacco exploits people's misery by offering them the only "pleasure" they can afford, cheap cigarettes no doubt made from crappy ingredients. 

Filters, recessed filters, charcoal, low-tar-and-nicotene cigarettes, even the screaming fallacy of "It's Toasted" - none of these ploys made a goddamn bit of difference to people's health. It had all been a very carefully calculated sham. Mildness, flavor, taste, "I smoke them because I like them", and my all-time favorite: "If you want a treat instead of a treatment" - none of these seductive little promises meant one less coffin sold. 

Butt Out - The Life and Death of Cigarette Advertising on Television

One of the better YouTube docs about cigarettes and the way Big Tobacco fought the truth (and won, for a very long time: "A treat instead of a treatment!").

By the way, this was produced by A & E. I used to watch Biography every day, then it trickled down to three times a week, then one, then it was on another network - then it disappeared, to be replaced by "reality" dreck. A & E no longer exists as a producer of quality documentaries.

Don't Stay Too Fat! and other stupid Friday things

OK, Corpula. Now comes something even more strange. . .

Ew. I don't know what's more creepy: "toilet mask" or "face glove". To be Worn Three Times in the Week, it says. Just don't wear it in public, particularly not when banking.

Throw your truss away! Get cured for $15. Farmers and Teamsters. "Cured My Rupture Without Cutting". THESE HUNDRED MEN insist, but I can't see how this wouldn't hurt. 

The flesh brush might be one of those vibrator-thingies they used on Victorian women to cure their "hysteria". If it was me, I think it would CAUSE hysteria, or at least some sort of sexual spasm. But maybe that was the cure. The flesh brush sends out little pinpricks of electricity. This was seen as a cure for everything. I can't read the rest of the copy, unfortunately.

This is so great that I must transcribe it word-for-word (though I hate doing that!):

"JOY'S CIGARETTES afford immediate relief in cases of ASTHMA, WHEEZING, and WINTER COUGH, and a little perseverence will effect a permanent cure. Universally recommended by the most eminent physicians and medical authors. Agreeable to use, certain in their effects, and harmless in their action, they may be safely smoked by ladies and children."

This one is even creepier: "Comfort, health and fashion demand right physical proportions. You can reduce the flesh on your entire body, or any part, by wearing one of Dr. Jeanne Walter's famous rubber garments for men and women a few hours a day."

Sorta like this, I guess. You'd lose weight, all right, and keel over from dehydration.

This Smedley guy is "THE KING" of CURES, and claims to be able to cure just about anything with his famous Chillie Paste. I can't read the ingredients, which probably aren't listed anyway, but could this be ordinary chili pepper extract of some kind, something that merely brings a sort of glow to the skin?

Kind of like when you rub your meat.

POST-POST: It's nearly Saturday now, and here I sit. What is the purpose of life? Surely not to sit on your ass blogging at midnight. There HAS to be more to it than that. But I can't afford romantic vacations or thrilling international adventures. Such things will be forever out of my reach. 

I do like ads, though - have always liked them, and the older they are the better. As a sort of caboose to the last bunch of them, I found some extremely gruesome corset ads that nevertheless boast of "ease", "comfort" and "fit". 

More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette

At some point in the marketing madness that pushed cigarettes down everyone's throat, a medical note began to sneak in. Nobody is quite sure why.

Mad Men dealt with this creeping uneasiness, and the frantic efforts of the tobacco companies to stifle it and play down any possible health effects. Oh, sure, cigarettes might cause a scratchy throat, a little bit of coughing, something like that. But here's this medical-looking man, this guy with a round silver disc strapped to his forehead (and what is he, a miner or something?) telling us to "smoke a FRESH cigarette." Camels! Something fresh about Camels, no doubt about it, though no one could quite say what it was.

One ad I found, which I can't conjure up here, said, "I want a treat, not a treatment." This is an obvious denial of some sort of sneaking suspicion that cigarettes might be, uh, er, um, bad for you. The ironic thing is that if you have enough of those "treats", treatment is almost inevitable - unless you just drop dead without it.

Hmmmm! Not one single case of throat irritation due to smoking Camels! Why such strident insistence, I wonder? Who brought the subject up, anyway? Humphrey Bogart?

I only wish I could read the testimonials of those tiny figures, each gleefully holding a lit Camel. I'm sure they'd be eye-opening to read.

NOW. . . Scientific Evidence on Effects of Smoking! A doctor does this razz-ma-tazz test on a whole bunch of smokers, and concludes there were "NO adverse effects on the nose, throat and sinuses of the group from smoking Chesterfields." They don't mention the lungs.

In our house, a chesterfield was something you lay down on to take a nap or watch Another World. And that guy, you know who he is, don't you? Christ in a rowboat - it's Arthur Fucking Godfrey, whom I hoped I would never have to look at again!

But this excerpt from a report on advertising, provenance unknown, kind of says it all. At least it's a lot more logical than what we've just looked at.

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