Marlboro Man's Unlikely Predecessor Was the Marlboro Woman in Ads

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For decades, Marlboro cigarettes have been all but synonymous with their iconic mascot, the Marlboro Man. The burly, rugged cowboy trailed the plains on horseback in the company's iconic 20th-century advertisements and TV commercials. More recently, he has made cameos in shows like "Seinfeld" and songs like "Old Town Road."

As a brand, Marlboro has positioned itself to symbolize a lifestyle of independence and self-reliance. But its history is far more complicated.

The brand first stepped out as a women's cigarette in 1924. At that time, smoking was considered a violation of social mores among respectable women. But many tobacco companies, including Marlboro, saw female smokers as an untapped market.

"The tobacco industry realized that half of its potential customers were not even considering using cigarettes," Robert Jackler, a tobacco advertising researcher at Stanford University, told Business Insider. "The industry actually began engineering ways of encouraging women to be willing to smoke in public."

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By the late 1920s, women's smoking had become an emblem of first-wave feminism. But Marlboro's advertisements were still steeped in gender stereotypes. They featured debutantes concerned about keeping their lipstick intact or doting housewives who craved the same cigarettes as their husbands.

The following vintage ads reveal how Marlboro has evolved over nearly 100 years.

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