Part 1 of The Century of the Self
I thought the first part of the documentary was very interesting. Although I have heard of the term “psychoanalysis”, I had never really seen the breakdown of how it can work. I thought the idea of making cigarettes into “torches of freedom” was an amazing marketing idea, especially when the rich debutante women are the ones who are smoking them. Not only does the term make the cigarettes seem empowering, but because the people who were smoking them were so powerful themselves, it really made it appealing for other women to want to do the same thing. I think this was the perfect way to change the stigma on cigarettes in that time period where it was really only a “manly thing.”
When I thought about this idea of changing a product from strictly being for one gender and making it into something that all genders will use, I thought about the idea of earrings. A hundred years ago, I’m sure it would be almost impossible to find a man wearing any type of earring(s). Now however, if you walk down the street you may find that half of the men, typically teenagers and those in their twenties, will be wearing earrings. I’m not exactly sure what started this, but I think it might have something to do with the fact that rich and “cool” rappers and singers wear them. This is just like the idea of the debutantes who smoked, because both people are rich and famous and doing something “out of the box”, it makes it appealing for the rest of the public to do the same thing.
