The first couple of times I saw this request, I kind of scratched my head. But it has cropped up often enough that now I'm wondering.
It would seem to me that nature equipped Woman with everything she needs for Man to desire her. The earliest artificial enhancements to Woman -- cosmetics -- simply made her appear to have more of what nature gave her. In essence, Man finds various aspects of Woman attractive -- sheer femaleness, symmetry, traits linked to the ability to bear children, traits linked to the ability of those children to survive, etc. So, overall, female enhancements have tended to make women look more female, more healthy, younger, etc.
The thing that stymied me is that smoking generally would make a woman less healthy, age more quickly, present risks to the health of offspring; etc. So, objectively, it would seem to be something men would find less appealing, rather than more so. Certainly, there is some phallic imagery there -- but that could be accomplished with far less dangerous objects.
So the fact that some men find it more than merely appealing had me scratching my head. I thought about it, and I have a theory.
The thing that makes a woman sexy is the fact she thinks of herself as sexy and appealing to men. You add a dose of confidence in there; and men will find her attractive. Her own belief in her own sexiness projects in a million subtle ways, and men pick up on it.
Men -- not all -- but many -- have a fascination with objects. They tend to transfer meaning to them.
So a woman who feels extra sexy wearing high heeled shoes will project that to the man, and the man will find her sexy. At some point, he may even see the act of wearing high heeled shoes, in and of itself, to be sexy. A sort of conditioning. Every time he brings home a woman wearing high-heeled shoes, he has an orgasm. The shoes are like the bell in Pavlov's experiment, and soon just noting the shoes will grab his sexual interest.
This can be augmented by media images. Sexy and self-confident women are shown on screen wearing high-heeled shoes, and the hero -- with whom the man watching identifies -- finds them sexually irresistible. It's a form of Ericksonian hypnosis.
This forms a sort of feedback loop between men and women and if it spreads far enough; men get to the point where they automatically turn to look anytime they hear the distinctive sound of high-heeled shoes. Yes? (*grin*) The shoes become a signal of sexiness for the man. Even though, objectively, they are probably akin to a medieval torture device that can maim women's feet at a minimum plus cause other problems. The conditioning overrides the rational; and the women make use of this conditioning.
For a long time, Hollywood and commercial advertising attempted to convince women that smoking made them more sexually attractive. This same message, viewed by men, at least made them more receptive to the idea.
But some women bought into the idea, and so they felt sexier when smoking. And just like high heeled shoes, this projected to the men they saw and the men ultimately associated women smoking with sexiness and sexual availability.
And, again, media reinforced this message. James Bond had a real Jones for smoking women. He couldn't lay them fast enough.
In addition, because of the rebellious aspect of smoking; there is a correlation in teen girls between smoking and sexual activity; meaning that odds are that many boys' first sexual experiences are likely to have been with girls who smoke. (That correlation in women between smoking and sexual experimentation disappears in the early 20's.)
At a certain point, a subset of men with the right exposures -- to magazine adds of sexy women smoking, media portraying an association between women smoking and sexiness, early sexual experiences, and exposure to smoking women who projected their belief that it made them sexier -- these men came to have a "smoking fetish."
I have a similar conditioning, but oriented toward lingerie because the first lady I actually really enjoyed sex with wore it constantly -- even during sex. So to this day, I love lingerie even though I rationally understand that it adds nothing to what nature gave Woman.
What I wonder now, are three things.
First, does my theory of the creation of object fetishes in men hold water?
Second, what evolutionary purpose can possibly be served by making men so easily conditioned in areas pertaining to sex? It would seem to make them more easily manipulated than would make sense.
Finally, smoking is dangerous. We will doubtless discover in the future that many other things portrayed as "sexy" today will be found to be dangerous tomorrow. In the case of smoking, fashions, etc. this phenomenon is clearly driven by a profit motive. How do you feel about having commercial interests program at least a subset of men to find various things outside of what nature intended to be sexy -- even things that can be harmful?
