Bernays framed smoking as liberation to sell cigarettes to women.

Evidence

Bernays sought to overthrow the taboo against women smoking outside the home by framing it as an abridgement of their freedom. Relying on some back-of-the-envelope Freudian analysis, including the idea of cigarettes as phallic objects and a source of oral satisfaction, he presented smokes as vital to a fuller life. And he hired a group of attractive women to march in the 1929 New York City Easter Day Parade, brandishing their Lucky Strikes, or “torches of freedom.” He had paid Ruth Hale, a prominent feminist, to sign the letter inviting the women to the march. “Light another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!” it thundered. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 238

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the immodesty moral-panic piece in the standing library, since both involve reframing taboos as freedom while selling consumption. — connects to: Bernays recruited debutantes by selling public smoking as a women’s rights act — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1255; Cigarette advertising sold smoking as youthful freedom and women’s liberation — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1694; Tobacco ads reframed smoking as freedom and adulthood to recruit the young
• SEED: Article angle: how a PR firm manufactured a feminist-sounding slogan, ‘torches of freedom,’ that whitewashed a death product — the template for cause-marketing ever since.

Broader Connections

• Cigarette advertising sold smoking as youthful freedom and women’s liberation #corroborates (0.95) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1694
• Tobacco ads reframed smoking as freedom and adulthood to recruit the young #corroborates (0.80)