As a child the Marlboro man always seemed a bit off to me. Dainty if you will. Now this isn’t some sort of anti smoking tirade, there are far too many of those as far as I’m concerned. No this is more a commentary on social upbringing, on how a child defines the world around him.
Growing up, my mother smoked and my father did not. Some of my aunts smoked, and some of my mother’s friends smoked. They all smoked cigarettes. My father did not smoke, and he would yell at my mom if she lit up in the house. As a matter of fact the only time I remember seeing my father smoke, he was puffing on a cigar with a group of other men, and he explained to me that it was ok to smoke a cigar on very special occasions. I accepted this as fact true. And up to that point, anytime I’d seen a man smoke, it had been either a cigar or a pipe - so everything seemed right in the world.
But in grade school the world expands - it changes. You start going over to your friend’s houses and you meet their families, their world. It was at one of my friend’s houses that I saw his dad smoke a cigarette. This was a man’s man. A blue collar man. A construction worker. But there he was puffing on this thin little stick, something that was reserved for ladies with flowers in their hats. This was my first encounter with gender confusion. And I asked about it, in the car, with the whole family. “Why does your dad smoke cigarettes, only girls do that?” I can assure you my confusion only managed to confound them far more than me.
It’s not so much what you teach your kids, it’s how you live around them. My parents never taught me cigarettes are for women, I just picked it up from what I thought were social cues around me. The things a parent accidentally teaches their children are far more powerful than anything an advertiser can ever try to accomplish.
And that’s why the Marlboro Man never really qualified as a man.
I guess it’s also why after a few beers on the weekends that I act like a little bitch.
