From the Girls and Children series (N58) promoting Our Little Beauties Cigarettes for Allen & Ginter brand tobacco products 1887

Curator: At first glance, this is just shockingly awful on so many levels; that expression on the girl’s face suggests some sort of premonition, like she just realized she’s stuck forever as cigarette advertising. Editor: What you’re describing there, is quite the cultural artifact. We are looking at “From the Girls and Children series (N58) promoting Our Little Beauties Cigarettes for Allen & Ginter brand tobacco products,” which the Allen & Ginter Company released in 1887. This portrait comes to us courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection. Curator: A beauty, alright! Allen & Ginter apparently considered hooking kids on nicotine a way to move product? Though, looking past all that questionable marketing, it does strike me as kind of sad how we co-opted these idyllic portrayals of innocence for, well, the opposite. Editor: Indeed, she's placed within an idyllic natural setting. And yet, something feels amiss, wouldn’t you say? There is almost a ghostly ambiance, with these pallid yellows, that drains any real color. It’s as if innocence is already fading away from her, or even that the child has always already known what awaits her! That slightly dazed, disconnected stare and those raised arms speak to so many emotional possibilities, maybe a type of surrender… Curator: Surrender is a key theme. It's fascinating how the image is constructed to almost deny her agency. The slight bow of her head, that demure posture. The visual symbolism clearly evokes an ideal of compliant femininity marketed toward adults, but using a child—it’s all very strategic in terms of semiotics. It just really disturbs me, all things considered. Editor: Well, perhaps if it were beautiful, the whole concept would be worse; it could more efficiently entice its consumers. Curator: Still, what a jarring collision of commercial intent and youthful representation. It's both captivating and deeply unsettling. Thanks for bringing this gem—or rather, this complicated cultural artifact—to light. Editor: Always happy to unearth the darkness. I, for one, will never see cigarette cards the same way again.