All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women's Bodies and Why It Matters Today

by Elizabeth Comen

In 1929, the year that Bertha Hunt sparked a mini revolution by lighting up at the Easter Day Parade, the notion that cigarettes represented liberation from the sexist days of yore was not entirely unfounded. Smoking was still considered an unseemly activity for women to engage in, a form of spiritual and moral corruption. In some places, including New York City, local governing bodies passed bills and ordinances that made it illegal for a woman to smoke in public—or even in the privacy of her own home if she had children. If this was bad news for women’s autonomy in the eyes of the law, it was also bad news for cigarette companies, who had an obvious, powerful financial incentive to smash the female smoking taboo. Enter Lucky Strike cigarettes and their main marketing strategist, a public relations pioneer named Edward Louis Bernays. “The president of the largest tobacco company called me in and told me they were losing half of their market, because men did not permit women to smoke either in public or even at home,” an elderly Bernays recalled, in an interview conducted shortly before his death in 1995. “‘What can we do about breaking down that taboo?’ he asked.” Bernays, who was Sigmund Freud’s nephew (small world!), naturally turned for advice to the nearest, respected disciple of his uncle, Abraham Arden Brill. What Brill said proved revelatory: shattering the cultural stigma around women smoking wasn’t just about getting women to enjoy cigarettes. It was about gettin...