I was looking back at some old entries, and found one that alluded to the possibility of me someday trying to explain why it is that I find Marlboro Red ("King", not "100") to be so sexy. I also indicated that it would be quite a hand-wave for me to attempt to justify that preference.
So why Marlboro Red? Why not Merit? Or Winston? Or American Spirit? Or Camel? They all look the same, from a visual fetishist's perspective, right? But if I see the categorical "her" smoking, and I find out it's Marlboro Red, it does considerably more for me than if it were something else. Clearly I'm not the only one, because there are entire websites devoted primarily to Marlboro Red imagery (e.g. RandomSnaps). Why? Why? Why?
It would be easy to look for some sort of Freudian or Oedipal explanation. But there is not one readily available. My sister, a life-long smoker, smoked Winston when I was little (she was much older than me). My mother, who smoked when I was a child, smoked Tareyton. So it's not that obvious of a connection.
It's definitely true that, when we were growing up, Marlboro was the "popular" cigarette. It's what the kids smoked. So maybe it was just the implantation of the norm-of-the-time that lingered on forever. But I feel like there's more to it than that. There's something I associate with Marlboro Red, in particular. They're reputed to be a "strong" brand, though they are not any stronger than many other regular cigarettes, and actually nowhere near as strong as many European brands. But there's something about the image. It's almost as if it's the ruggedness of the Marlboro Man that penetrated our psyches through advertising, juxtaposed with the femininity of woman: the "yin" and "yang", if you will. There's definitely an attachment in the mind of "bad girl" associated with the brand. But why more than any other brand? Wouldn't smoking at all constitute "bad girl"?
Marlboro Red was never marketed to women, from what I recall of advertising. I'm searching for ways, reasons perhaps, that advertising might have played a role in our fetish selections. But it's not apparent.
Interestingly, there was one point in time where my preference seemed to drift to a different place. When I was between 18-20 years old, I had a temporary preference for "all white 100" and even tried to persuade a girlfriend who was smoking Newport to switch to these. Again, this is all odd to me, because I don't know why I wanted that either. I have no idea. I just wanted it. And then, at some point, in my mid-to-late 20's, I flipped back to the Marlboro Red thing again, and never changed preference from that point onward.
The current girlfriend, whom I mentioned earlier (and is a recent ex-smoker), was smoking Marlboro Medium 100. That was close (but no cigar, pun intended) to my preference (though I never talked to her about that). But even that subtle difference made me think "If only it had been Marlboro Red".
Actually, the entire notion of "brand preference" is so strange with cigarettes, if you ask me, anyway. How do people identify themselves? Smokers will claim that it's about flavor. But certainly they haven't sampled every choice available, like you'd do with cheese or salad dressing, before deciding you prefer "cheddar" or "Ranch", for example. There's something about image, and associations, and other scarcely tangible factors. At some point, I'd love to ask my current girlfriend how she made the choices she made (she has mentioned that at various times it was either Camel, or American Spirit, or the Marlboro Medium). But I hesitate, somewhat, to get into the discussion, because a) it will turn me on, which I am at least pretending to try not to do, and b) it may make her want to smoke, which I am definitely trying not to encourage.
It reminds me of a song by Regina Spektor, called "That Time", where she sings:
Hey remember that time when I would only smoke Parliaments?
Hey remember that time when I would only smoke Marlboros?
Hey remember that time when I would only smoke Camels?
Hey remember that time when I was broke?
I didn't care, I'd just bum from a friend.
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