Smoking publicly was taboo and even illegal for women in 1920s cities

Evidence

In the late 1920s, it was still taboo for women to smoke in public; in some cities, including, for a brief while, New York, it was even against the law. But to the monomaniacal Hill, the idea was sheer commercial opportunity. “It will be,” he told Bernays, “like opening a new gold mine right in our front yard.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 234

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s own essay ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ — same dynamic of gendered restrictions on public behavior being moralized and later commercialized. — connects to: Cigarette advertising sold smoking as youthful freedom and women’s liberation — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1694; Advertisers weaponized social shame and judgment to sell products to women in the 1920s — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 217

Broader Connections

• Cigarette advertising sold smoking as youthful freedom and women’s liberation #expands (0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1694
• Advertisers weaponized social shame and judgment to sell products to women in the 1920s #complicates (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 217