Aunt Martha and Ginny | Virginia Slims & Sports

Health and fitness became an ironically unhealthy obsession in the 1970s, the decade introduced fad diets, exercise routines, and consumers purchased diet pills such as Dexatrim, and electric muscle stimulators promised fast results. The 1970s also gave rise to fitness celebrities such as Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons. The March 1978 TIME magazine cover features Cheryl Tiegs, who modeled for Virginia Slims. Seizing on the fitness craze and the associated glamour of health and vitality, Virginia Slims marketed itself as the picture of health, and it was only natural that a vigorous sport ideal for health-conscious young women would be a ready-made sponsorship opportunity.

Though smoking is the point of it all, Tiegs does not smoke. She holds her long, skinny cigarette unlit in her long, graceful fingers. In the finished ad, the cigarette will be lit for her, politely, by the retoucher. As she walks off the set to be dressed in her next costume, she drops the Slims to the floor. By the end of the day, Tiegs, Nancy and Cristina will have, in such fashion, gone through more than a pack.