Judge, 1891-08-08 · page 16 of 16
Judge — August 8, 1891 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page presents a series of comedic illustrations addressing fashion and body-image absurdities of the summer season. The cartoons mock mismatches between people's physical attributes and their clothing choices: The satirical questions highlight vanity and poor judgment: why do thin men wear costumes that emphasize their skeletal frames? Why do overweight women choose horizontal stripes that add visual width? Why do poorly-proportioned men parade in revealing beach wear? The humor relies on exaggerated caricature—showing individuals whose body types seem to actively contradict their fashion selections. This reflects Judge magazine's typical approach: using grotesque illustration to ridicule social pretensions and poor taste, particularly regarding how Americans present themselves during leisure season. The satire suggests that vanity blinds people to their own unflattering appearance—a timeless theme, though expressed through the specific fashion anxieties of Judge's era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
comicbooks.com ist on choosing stripes when they ¢ tall, thin woman insi jer, and the fat woman checks when they make her Why do young men with badly-shaped limbs insist on wearing cos- Pose. for hours on the beach in an abbreviated costume ? 2 mes that make them more ridiculous still > Why does the big, fat-headed man always have a si and the thin-beaded man the gigantic yacbtin SUMMER-TIME PROBLEMS.