From the Girls and Children series (N58) promoting Our Little Beauties Cigarettes for Allen & Ginter brand tobacco products 1887

Curator: Wow, that’s quite something. My immediate reaction is, how bizarre! It's almost unsettling in its vintage eeriness. Editor: This is an 1887 promotional print created for Allen & Ginter brand tobacco. Part of their "Girls and Children" series, it was intended to promote their "Our Little Beauties" cigarettes. Now housed at The Met. Curator: See, unsettling, right? It's that collision of childhood innocence with, well, marketing a carcinogenic product! The figure looks like a kid in a jester’s outfit with lute in hand, yet the whole image exudes this creepy feeling—like a porcelain doll staring blankly into your soul. Editor: There is indeed an intense symbolic weight. This child, dressed as a court jester, holds what looks like a lute but resembles more a tambourine, traditionally used for merriment, which in a Freudian twist turns ominous with this tobacco push to children, turning youth into mere spectacle. Curator: Exactly! And that title – "Our Little Beauties." There’s this strange sense of ownership and objectification inherent in those words, amplified by the sugary, overly precious tone, particularly troubling when associated with cigarettes. Like the commodification of innocence, served with a side of nicotine! It makes your skin crawl, doesn’t it? Editor: I cannot shake off the idea that such "innocent" looking adverts disguised potential ruin, akin to temptations hidden within sweet appearances, as if inviting a slow, corrosive process. One has to be aware that such early imagery reflects less the virtues of innocence and more the cultural ambivalence and potential corruptions that it might hide. Curator: Yeah. This little promotional drawing for Allen & Ginter is far more insidious. More about how desires, innocence, and mortality get so brutally entwined in this thing we call capitalism. Who knew tobacco ads could get you contemplating mortality! Editor: So true. As we've seen, beyond its initial surface as advertising, "Our Little Beauties" exposes many hidden and still sensitive layers that shape us collectively. It invites reflection, reminding us about images' crucial capacity to mirror both ideals and social realities.