The Crier

The Light Stuff

Despite tobacco’s insidious effects, the right people — from Sartre to Obama — have always managed to make it look cool

Chann Weill · Cultured · Mar 09, 2007

I’ve always been a social smoker: enjoying the occasional coffee and a cigarette in the evening cool of spring term in Ann Arbor, providing nervous hands with something to do at an unfamiliar bar.

Cigarettes were never something I needed, necessarily, but until this year, I could usually be found with a pack of Lucky Strikes Lights in my bag, tucked between a weekend copy of the Wall Street Journal and a discrete flask of J&B.

(I’m kidding. About the last detail at least.)

But distributors of the brand known as your grandfather’s — and ironic hipsters’ — choice of smoke, with its charmingly outdated catchphrase (“It’s Toasted!”) and classic package art (oh, those concentric circles! that red racing stripe!), discontinued North American sales of both the regular and light versions of its filtered cigarette at the end of 2006.

Part of me, not my thankful lungs, crumbled when I heard the news.

Smoking is a habit inextricably tied to other vices, but one that looks and feels like you’re channeling absolute cool — at least that’s what journalists and movie stars have thought for years, surgeon general be damned.

Smoking is a habit inextricably tied to other vices, but one that looks and feels like you’re channeling absolute cool

What would I do now that the purveyor of my little indulgence cut its market — just as smoking’s media approval rating seems to be taking a little climb while anti-smoking legislation increases?

One of Slate.com’s most talked about stories this quarter was its take on Barack Obama’s dirty habit. With Barry-bashers tittering over acknowledgement that the Democratic presidential candidate and Illinois junior senator smokes on occasion — and rumors that he was trying to quit smoking before the 2008 race intensifies — Juliet Eilperin wrote a piece on Obama’s glorious smoker’s tenor. Featuring the rather unobjective kicker of “If Obama stops smoking, will he lose his amazing voice?”, the article is positively lusty. Is Slate pro-smoke? The reader gets the sense that his cigarette habit doesn’t make Obama look trashy, but instead it makes the one-time Harvard Law Review editor more human. He has vices, too.

British web publication The First Post published a classy, black-and-white tribute to other smoking celebrities on the first of last month to coincide with France’s decision to ban public smoking. “Adieu Gauloises, bonjour tristesse” (Goodbye Gauloises, hello sadness) reads the mournful header above photographs of such notables from Yves Montand to Jacques Chirac smoking in bars, offices and restaurants — an activity that very soon may be no more. It’s a fitting tribute from one heavy-smoking nation to another.

For me, part of the appeal of Luckies was the brand’s design as well as the tobacco’s dry, nutty taste; hands down, Lucky Strike has the best marketing and design aesthetic of any cigarette brand. Simple, recognizable, and not strangely phallic.

Lucky Strike has the best marketing and design aesthetic of any cigarette brand. Simple, recognizable, and not strangely phallic

But for other female smokers that tend toward gendered design and packaging — how anti-feminist this sounds, I know — R.J. Reynolds has created a new line of Camel No. 9s with a smart redesign that isn’t just a different portrayal of the cartoonish Joe Camel figure, as special series and art packs sometimes are.

The sleek, simple design coupled with the “No. 9” name recalls Chanel perfume; its very intentionally a “girly” cigarette. There’s even pink foil for the inside wrapping (or teal, if you choose, um, menthols). And the tiny pink camel on the cigarette itself? Adorable.

Despite how cigarettes seem to be marketed — and accepted — as cooler or cool again in increasingly inventive ways, its impossible to ignore the negative effects of smoking. It’s why all of these anti-smoking laws are popping up anyway.

But after a stressful week, I was won over by Big Tobacco’s cleverly girly ploys. I caved and bought my first pack in over a month: shiny pink No. 9s. Don’t worry, I’ll only smoke one or two on occasion — Obama should approve.