You’ve come a long way baby
We have been avidly catching up on Mad Men and still so impressed with the show. Peggy is possibly the best female character ever written for television. I knew she was channeling Mary Wells Lawrence, who I always associate with Plop Plop Fizz Fizz but there was an article in the New York Times this past Sunday confirming it.
Lawrence is a Media Icon having invented some of the most classic ditties known in advertising.
I watched this last episode with interest as Peggy has left the firm to be Copy Chief of another and she is handed cigarettes to be targeted at women. We all know where this is going – Virginia Slims, You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby. What a slogan!
In April when my hair started to fall out, I began smoking again, one cigarette at a time. First it was a couple of puffs, then it was a full cig, then it became half a pack a day. I had gotten my OP (other person’s) cig from a friend who smokes Virginia Slims Ultra (regular). The alchemy of me and that cig was like pure magic.
Until it wasn’t. That took all of a few weeks before I was coughing like a seasoned pro, and hating the way I smelled and taking on clandestine habits like losing the crowd to withdraw to my screen porch for a long pull off a Virginia Slim – oh me and my addiction. How unsightly.
I glamorized it for all of about a month and then started to fret about my habit. Only armed with having just read the Power of Habit, I knew that it was a habit I needed and could break. And so I did.
I thought about the slogan last night as I was preparing for sleep – yes I have, I thought, yes I have.
It’s still a great slogan. Only it means something else now.