Cigars For Women: Because Ladies Can Get Man Cancer, Too

Like most consumption trends presented to women as a rah rah girl power way to do man things like a man, cigar smoking doesn’t do anything to combat sexism. It does, however, still give ladies various cancers. You’ve come a long way, baby.

According to a piece in the Indy Star, the hottest new trend among Empowered® women is to smoke cigars like men. Either that, or the hottest new trend among flailing cigar stores is to market cigars to women under the guise that it’s a thing that Empowered® women do. A modern-day chicken/egg scenario, if you will.

One thing that’s clear, though, is that more women are lighting up than before. According to the Star, back in the Wolf of Wall Street days, only one half of one percent of American women smoked stogies. Now, that number is up to 3% of American women.

But it seems that many of the women who smoke cigars aren’t into the traditional “roll of hot tires” flavor offered by many traditional man cigars (those who are are pretty hard core), and so cigar stores are making them in flavors ladies love. Like vanilla, and chocolate (Haven’t you ever seen a Dove commercial? Bitches love chocolate!), and custom made cocktails designed to complement the flavored cigars (also in vanilla and chocolate). Some cigar lounges are even making such woman-friendly accommodations as: “ventilation.”

There’s good equality — where women earn as much as their male counterparts YAY — and then there’s Why Is This Being Cheerleaded At All? equality — where women are sold the idea that in order to exert themselves as man-equals, they must do everything bad and self-destructive that men do and so they smoke cigars and get mouth cancer and die. Look: if a woman wants to smoke a cigar every now and again, then, you know, she should go ahead and do it. But it’s silly to pretend that self destruction, as a marketing strategy, is empowering. Sometimes a vice is just a vice, no matter the gender of the person indulging… even if it does taste like chocolate.