[dfwgator]

While a cigarette is a cigarette, you will never see a man smoking a Virginia Slim because the product is associated with women and elegant femininity. Yet the product survives because half the population is made up of women.

Marlboro was originally marketed as a Woman's cigarette.

[SamAdams76]

Underappreciated fact. Marlboros were once marketed to women smokers. Selling points were the filters, the mild taste, the red ivory tips, and the red band around the filter to hide the lipstick stains.

Back then, most men smoked unfiltered cigarettes and it was considered "effeminate" for men to smoke them with filters and especially have them in cigarette holders.

All that changed when smoking cigarettes was linked to lung cancer. Suddenly filtered cigarettes became acceptable to men. Marlboro adopted a much more rugged, masculine image in advertising for their product and thus it became the "masculine cowboy" brand we are familiar with today.