Smoking has often been regarded as fashionable throughout the history of the twentieth-century, accounting for a large amount of the habit’s popularity.
The 1920s saw cigarette adverts that featured the great writer and aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, amongst other stars, and assertions that smoking keeps you slim (a marketing myth that many people still believe as fact today).
The 1950s saw the rise of the athletic and desirable Marlboro Men, whose smoking was meant only to enhance their masculine appeal. Movie stars throughout the decades, such as Joan Crawford and Gloria Swanson were paid huge sums by tobacco companies to smoke in the public eye in an attempt to make smoking appear glamorous and aspirational.