1969: Tipalet Cigarette Ad - Primary Source Tea

Artifacts from the Patriarchy - Just Blow Smoke in Her Face, Apparently

Today’s artifact from the Department of Absolutely Not is this 1969 Tipalet cigar advertisement, which confidently presents one of the most astonishing slogans ever approved by a marketing department:

“Blow in her face and she’ll follow you anywhere.”

Not “be charming.”

Not “treat her with respect.”

Not even “have a conversation.”

Just blow smoke directly into her face.

Apparently the path to romance in 1969 was less about courtship and more about secondhand smoke. The advertisement promised men that a single puff of cherry-flavored cigar smoke would transform a woman into a devoted follower. The copy literally states:

“A puff in her direction and she’ll follow you, anywhere.”

Which raises a number of questions, the most immediate being whether the advertising team had ever actually met a woman.

The image itself is doing a lot of work. The man looms over the woman, confidently exhaling smoke into her face. She gazes back at him as if she has just witnessed the invention of fire. The power dynamic is impossible to miss. He acts. She reacts. He possesses the product. She becomes part of the reward.

That reward is the real thing being sold.

The cigar is almost incidental.

The actual promise is male power and sex.

Advertising scholars have long noted that many mid-century advertisements sold products by attaching them to fantasies about gender and social status. The Stanford Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising archive categorizes this ad under “Objectifying Women” and notes that it presents women as something that can be attracted and controlled through the product itself.

And that is what makes this ad such a useful historical artifact.

The advertisement isn’t really telling men that women like the smell of flavored cigars. It’s telling men that women are simple creatures whose behavior can be manipulated. Buy the right product and women will respond accordingly. The relationship is presented almost like a vending machine.

Insert cigar.¹

Receive woman.

What the ad reveals is a worldview that was remarkably common in the postwar decades. Popular culture often portrayed men as active pursuers and decision-makers while women existed as prizes, followers, assistants, admirers, or decorative accessories. The assumption wasn’t merely that men and women were different. It was that men acted upon the world while women reacted to it.

The woman in this advertisement has no desires, goals, opinions, or agency of her own. She exists only as a measuring stick for male success.

The cigar is proof of masculinity because it supposedly produces female compliance.

And that’s where the comparison to a much more recent advertisement gets interesting.

Axe Body Spray.

Specifically, the 2011 commercial “Even Angels Will Fall.”

If you’ve never seen it, the premise is breathtaking in its commitment to the bit. Beautiful female angels literally crash down from heaven, rip off their halos, shatter stained glass, and abandon eternal salvation because they have caught the scent of a man wearing Axe deodorant.

It’s absurd.

It’s over-the-top.

It’s clearly meant to be funny.

And yet beneath all the spectacle, it’s selling almost exactly the same fantasy as the Tipalet advertisement.

The Tipalet ad promises:

“Blow in her face and she’ll follow you anywhere.”

The Axe ad promises:

“Spray this on yourself and women will descend from heaven itself.”

The mechanism changes. The fantasy remains remarkably similar.

In both advertisements, women function primarily as rewards. They are not individuals making choices. They are evidence that the product works.

The man consumes.

The women appear.

That is the transaction.

What makes the comparison so fascinating is that the Axe commercial arrives more than forty years after the Tipalet ad. Society had changed dramatically. Feminism had transformed public conversations about gender. Advertisers could no longer openly present women as obedient followers.

So the fantasy evolved.

Instead of one woman following a man because of his cigar, dozens of supernatural women throw away literal paradise because of his deodorant.

The sexism becomes wrapped in irony, humor, and fantasy, but the underlying message remains surprisingly familiar. The product supposedly grants men access to female desire without requiring anything from them beyond consumption.

Buy product.

Receive women.

Tipalet simply lacked the modern instinct to disguise what it was selling.

That’s what makes it such a valuable historical source. It exposes a fantasy that later advertisements often dressed up in jokes, special effects, and self-awareness.

The Axe commercial asks us to laugh because angels are abandoning heaven.

The Tipalet ad asks us to laugh because women are abandoning free will.

And honestly, I appreciate the historical honesty of the second one. At least it wasn’t pretending.

1. I can’t decide if this is Freudian or not. I’m leaning toward yes.