The limits of persuasion: Advertising, gender and the culture of Australian smoking*

Abstract

This article examines the shift from pipe to cigarette smoking in Australia from World War I to the 1950s; challenges the assumption that women were the major source of the rising popularity of cigarette smoking; questions, through a content analysis of themes in cigarette advertisements in major newspapers, the impact on smoking patterns of mass advertising before the 1950s; and shows the rising importance of roll‐your‐own cigarette consumption as a sign of masculine and working‐class identity and as an adaptation to modern urban life.