"It's fine with me. It's like 30 years ago women didn't play golf, it  was all men, and now they do. Why shouldn't they smoke cigars?" 
"It's sexier than cigarettes. Cigarettes still have  stigma, you know, they're bad for you, they're cheap, but women who smoke cigars exude a kind of power and confidence." 
"I love watching a woman smoke a cigar. I think for some of them it's a power trip, but then it is probably for guys too." 

I'm only sorry Sigmund Freud isn't alive to give the talk show circuit  his ten cents worth. Sigmund, who spent his life studying women, men and hormones, would have loved the cigar phenomenon. The dark rooms, the musky smell, the guys in Armani, the women in Calvin, the specter of sex hanging over the proceedings, and the cigar, symbolic of all things phallic, in everyone's clutches. Talk about psych 101. 
 
(I used to think Fidel Castro was just another fruitcake Communist dictator who bought all his clothes as the army/navy store (somebody should turn Fidel onto the Gap. Jungle green is not his color), but now it's clear the guy was way ahead of  Wall St. bankers and Hollywood honchos who just started to liplock stogies. Forget trying to look menacing and fight off the capitalist threat, the man was just trying to pick up babes.) 

Lori Greenberg, a woman who runs Cee-gar See-Bar in Brooklyn, has been watching the phenomenon of chicks and cigars for some time now. She says the trend just echoes what is going on across the board with women breaking the glass ceiling, as the millennium approaches. 

"There are a lot of things going on," she says. "People are under pressure, the job market is very competitive and drinking and having a cigar is a great way to unwind." 
"Plus I think smoking a cigar  and drinking a fine liquor takes you back to another era, and people like that." 
"Also, cigar bars are not meat markets. Women can go  there, socialize, enjoy a cigar and  relax. 

So the question is, if you want to surf the stogie  wave, how do you get started? If you're a woman, it seems designer clothes are de riguer. A pair of those spiky heels that went down the runway in New York this season would help too. Then flip through one of those glossy cigar  magazines with Demi or Elle or Claudia on the cover to pick up the lingo when it comes to brands. (Have you seen those things? They're bigger that the King James bible and certainly have  more advertising.) 

And if you still need coaching, there's a new video on the market called "Cigars 102: For Women Only" the first, I learned, aimed solely at teaching women how to select and enjoy fine cigars. The folks who distribute it swear the tape provides a step by step guide to give women confidence from the  moment they open a humidor. Jane Fonda's workout tape it ain't. 

On the last leg of my quest to understand why women want cigars as bad as liposuction, I pop into Hampton's Tobacco in New York. There I learn that eight per cent of women customers  are buying for themselves, which compared to two years ago, when the figure was hovering at around zero, is a miracle. Women know what they like too: Macanudo Petites at around $12 a box. They are slim, elegant and make you look sexy without evoking images of Groucho Marx or a fat, balding uncle. 

Frankly, I don't care if this thing with chicks and cigars doesn't last. For my money, it could end  tomorrow. See, we've made our little feminist statement, even those of us who don't indulge. With cigars, women  invaded one of the last bastions of  male turf. We made our statement. We said, hey guys, we've arrived. This used to be your thing, and now it's our thing too. And unlike in the eighties, when we wore those horrendous suits with bulging shoulders to stake our claim, this time we did it wearing lipstick and high heels. Now that's cool.