[ Post a Response | The Sublime Desire of Cigarette Smoking ]
Posted by M G F (&V) on July 30, 2009, 1:06 pm
Message modified by board administrator July 30, 2009, 2:15 pm
I love the image. I like the way the beautiful Carol Alt, then in her late twenties, radiating health and vitality, appears to be dancing over the warning that had only recently been required in place of “The Surgeon General Has Determined that Cigarette Smoking is Dangerous to Your Health” with which she had grown up.
Carol and I go way back. I remember the ad from which the image was taken. It was the one with the diagram of a palm showing lines with tags such as “No career” or “Little chance of success.” It appeared when I was in the last year or two of high school. I had been smoking for 6 years or so, and was a dedicated pack a day girl. I didn’t know what sort of career I wanted, but I knew I would have one, and that I would be a smoker: that I would defy the stereotype being promoted by the anti-smoking movement of smokers as unmotivated underachievers too addicted to set and reach goals. That ad and its familiar tag line “You’ve come a long way baby” resonated with me. (It also worked. I tried smoking VS full flavors for a while, but returned to Marlboro Reds within a couple of weeks.)
Now, 20-some years later, I have a successful career as a nurse and I still smoke. So, seeing Carol dance over the warning all of us know so well and choose to accept and ignore, and with which I flirt with every lungful of smoke I inhale, is very nice indeed.
V notes: Just added the header image and original ad links, and identified the remix title in the subject line.
Carol's a smoker, BTW, and she's still *Gorgeous*...
Thanks M G F! 
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