Sex, Lies, and Cigarettes: Canadian Women, Smoking, and Visual Culture, 1880–2000
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by Sharon Anne Cook
McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 2012 444 pp., illus., $49.95 hardcover
Any woman who has ever enjoyed a cigarette knows that its allure outweighs — however fleetingly — its costs. One of the most interesting and persuasive arguments made by Sharon Anne Cook in her book on the modern history of Canadian women and smoking is her consideration of the cigarette as a theatrical prop that has appealed, and continues to appeal, to women as an empowering tool in forging their own identities.
No, it’s not a book that advocates smoking. The University of Ottawa distinguished professor tracks not only “smoking’s cultural power” but also both the affirmative and temperance roles of Canadian women towards smoking throughout the modern era.
By conveying the “social functions” and “social characteristics” of smoking for women and the “social rewards for the woman smoker,” Cook elucidates the complex nature of women’s relationships to cigarettes.
Highlighting the visual component of this history — the ways in which “women as smokers, decorative objects, or public advocates have been represented by others and how they have represented themselves” in their smoking practices — Cook brings a fresh analysis to the troubling continued appeal of smoking while enriching our understanding of the idea of history itself.
As she writes, “Visual culture reminds the historian, who usually relies on words and numbers, that to fully appreciate longstanding social phenomena such as smoking, the visual is truly worth ‘a thousand words.’” Her book includes a rich compendium of historical illustrations.
It’s a testament to Cook’s writing talent, insight, and research skills that she is able to integrate and evaluate the visual codes and culture of smoking for women in Sex, Lies, and Cigarettes. What could have become a tediously distended dissertation is handled with a light touch, belying the book’s depth of research and historic range. The writing pleasure that the author recounts in her acknowledgements brims over into the reading.
— Mariianne Mays Wiebe (Read bio)
Mariianne Mays Wiebe is a poet and writer with an interest in creative processes across the disciplines.