Weed of the wild: Health, identity and gender among new cigar smokers

Abstract

Cigars today reproduce American health, identity and gender ideologies rooted in capitalism. Because of pressures to be both producer and consumer, the cigar is merely the latest appropriation of our control/release cycle. Thus, part one unravels the myth of the "safe tobacco." Examining another dualism, part two addresses the construction of identity as negotiation between individual and society. Uniqueness is sought-after, and smokers purchase a ready-made "image" to make their own. Finally, part three shifts Foucault's "normalizing gaze" from female to male. For young men, cigars signify one's "arrival"; for women, "image" and attention-getting schemes. But these impressions negate the female cigar experience. In actuality, both manipulate the symbol differently: Women use cigars as transgressive identity, men embodied identity. However, health risks increase for each. As cigarette users, women often inhale. As non-smokers, men forge a new group once deemed safe from tobacco's costs and pleasures.