Cigarettes and Monocles

As you know, I don't "blog" anymore, except in times of worldwide emergency, which seemingly will be all the time now, and also there is nothing else to do anymore. So Megan and I are reading a bio of Ernst Lubitsch, which led me to watch Lubitsch's early silent film I WOULDN'T WANT TO BE A MAN, in which our protagonist must disguise herself as a man in order to smoke cigarettes publicly. This sort of backs up a thesis I put forth in my cigarette lighter book, about how before World War I, cigarettes were generally considered "feminine," whereas after World War I they had become "masculine." Or maybe it doesn't. And maybe that's not even what I said. I know I have a copy of that book somewhere. Oh well. I believe that in the same slim volume I also went off on the subject of monocles for some reason (I know why, but it's boring)... including the brief craze for wearing monocles with plain, non-magnifying glass in them just for the hell of it. Anyway, she does that in the movie, too! So I could have had a big time with I WOULDN'T WANT TO BE A MAN in my cigarette lighter book if only life had worked out differently.