Freedom Through Smoke: From Bernays’s Torches to Iran’s Burning Images
“Torches of Freedom.” AI image Introduction On Easter Sunday in 1929, young women walked down Fifth Avenue holding lit cigarettes as if they were political banners. Nearly a century later, images circulate online of Iranian women lighting cigarettes from burning photographs of the Supreme Leader. At first glance, the two moments seem separated by history, geography, and political context. Yet both rely on the same striking gesture: a woman publicly inhaling smoke as a sign of defiance. One was a carefully scripted publicity stunt designed to sell tobacco; the other is an act of resistance against a repressive state. Placing them side by side exposes a deeper question: why does smoking, of all things, keep becoming a symbol of female freedom? Bernays and the Manufacture of Emancipation Edward L. Bernays, a pioneer of public relations and nephew of Sigmund Freud, understood that human beings do not simply respond to arguments. They respond to images that condense desire, anxiety, a...