In the article “From the Physician to the Marlboro Man: Masculinity, Health, and Cigarette Advertising in America, 1946-1964” the authors Cameron White, John L. Oliffe, and Joan L Bottorff discuss the changing of American masculinity ideals after WWII and how they changed over time based on how cigarette advertisements changed over time. He starts by describing what makes a cigarette so powerful as a commodity. Commodities, the authors argue, are full of values and can change a person’s self-identity. This means that the values and ideals that a cigarette is shown to have the consumer will be drawn to the product to show they have the same values of the product.
The first advertisement that White et al. goes over is the famous campaign “More doctors smoke camels” done by Camel cigarettes. In this campaign every ad showed a picture of a doctor smoking a cigarette, and without fail the doctor was, in fact, a white male. White et al. goes into further detail about the advertisements pointing out that in many of them there are women working in the pictures, but they are always nurses, shown with a doctor standing over them the man obviously in charge. The advertisements all also show the doctor with a very paternalistic presence, caring for anyone and everyone they can. Back in those …show more content…
This was shown in the next big advertising campaign, this time instead of the safe respected doctor it was a big bad cowboy, the Marlboro man. White et al. explain how while the doctor showed a man’s control over health the Marlboro man expressed a man’s individualism and anti-institutionalism. In a time where the cold war was in full swing much of the American public was worried that the conformity of American culture was stripping men of their masculinity. A cowboy though is the opposite of conformity, it shows individualism and therefore, in this time of conformity and fear,
The first advertisement that White et al. goes over is the famous campaign “More doctors smoke camels” done by Camel cigarettes. In this campaign every ad showed a picture of a doctor smoking a cigarette, and without fail the doctor was, in fact, a white male. White et al. goes into further detail about the advertisements pointing out that in many of them there are women working in the pictures, but they are always nurses, shown with a doctor standing over them the man obviously in charge. The advertisements all also show the doctor with a very paternalistic presence, caring for anyone and everyone they can. Back in those …show more content…
This was shown in the next big advertising campaign, this time instead of the safe respected doctor it was a big bad cowboy, the Marlboro man. White et al. explain how while the doctor showed a man’s control over health the Marlboro man expressed a man’s individualism and anti-institutionalism. In a time where the cold war was in full swing much of the American public was worried that the conformity of American culture was stripping men of their masculinity. A cowboy though is the opposite of conformity, it shows individualism and therefore, in this time of conformity and fear,