From the Actresses series (N57) promoting Our Little Beauties Cigarettes for Allen & Ginter brand tobacco products 1890

This small card promoting Allen & Ginter’s cigarettes was one of a series printed in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. The image is a sign of its times. In the 1880s, the American Tobacco Company, soon to become a monopoly, aggressively promoted its products with attractive images of celebrities. This card belongs to a set called “From the Actresses,” associating smoking with alluring and independent women. In a society that often restricted women's roles, actresses represented a new kind of public figure. They were performers in a new kind of commercialized leisure, increasingly visible in the press and on city streets. The card participates in this transformation. It invites us to purchase a harmful product by associating it with a vision of beauty, spectacle, and an evolving sense of feminine identity. Historians of consumer culture find these images fascinating. They consult a range of documents such as newspapers, advertisements, and company records to understand the complex relations between tobacco, gender, and consumerism in this period.