ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the cultural meanings cigarettes carried when they were initially introduced into American culture, and how these meanings, because they were inconsistent with building mass markets for the product, were changed in large part through advertising. In making this argument the chapter concentrates on the ways in which early cigarette advertisements drew from existing discourses of gender, modernity, and race to create particular associations between cigarettes and ideals of masculinity and femininity. The chapter discusses the way in which the positive association between cigarettes and masculinity was coaxed and nurtured by advertisers. According to a Duke biographer: "At first only two of the regular James Buchanan Duke dealers would consider handling the newfangled smokes, and their sales were faltering. They said only flossy, high-society dudes would smoke cigarettes". Complicating the derision of the New Woman in cigarette promotion is the fact that in general discourse she was sometimes associated with cigarette smoking herself.
