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Cigarettes used to be considered as sexy extensions back in the day; emphasis on back in the day. They were promoted with lies and now, decades later, some celebrities promote cigarettes through their fashion/magazine layouts. I’m not the health and fitness equivalent of an Islamist, but I think that in the 21st century, health is important and self awareness is a logical step in our era. We no longer live in the technically naive Fifties or during the conniving era of Big Tobacco, when these companies obscured important scientific information about their products but the fashion industry and many of its publications chooses to close its eyes and continue -subtly-encouraging women to partake in lethal activities. I suppose I’m cranky about it because it took me five long years to break free from cigarettes and I won’t reveal the length of my relationship with the noxious and pointless tobacco plant. Breaking off with a narcissistic stalker is easier, in comparison.
When I see drug addled celebrities (who look two decades older due to their drug use) being promoted as sex goddesses, I want to scream. Take Lindsay Lohan. This shoot for Muse Magazine focuses on slut glamor, if there can be such a thing. In these images Lindsay looks like a junkie. By styling these images this way, I’m not talking about the sexual theme or threeway depiction, but the cigarette as a core feature in one out of every two images, Muse practically promotes cigarettes.
There was even a video that was made to accompany and promote this shoot and it was posted on YouTube; the intelligent people who posted obviously didn’t read YouTube’s terms and conditions. It’s no longer live on YouTube and I woudn’t advice clicking any suspicious links within the video posters in YouTube (because you’ll be redirected to suspicious porn sites), but a great description of the video’s essence has been offered at Celebitchy:
It’s really as bad as you would expect given the photos we’ve seen. The thing is set to porny music and it’s so dirty it makes me want to take a bath. It’s not sexy dirty it’s nasty, funky-smelling, stale cigarette smoke dirty. In fact there’s so much cigarette smoking going on that it makes my eyes water. At 1:00 minute into the film there’s even a visible bite mark on the poor male model Petey’s back. There are several scenes in which Lindsay seems to be lounging and smoking a cigarette while she’s been serviced for lack of a better word. She looks really strung out, or as Kaiser puts it “cranked out of her skull.”
What is the message? That girl is a complete failure and that the only thing she can do is smoke?
Global statistics indicate that higher numbers of women are smoking, and developing smoking related illnesses. This is not good. Magazines that publish this sort of unhealthy rubbish should consider the damage they do. It makes me wonder if tobacco companies work through fashion photographers, magazines and magazine editors to get their warped message across.
Images are by Yu Tsai
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Some of the photographers who capture this sort of seediness think that this is the very definition of art. I don’t buy magazines like Muse and don’t plan to.