Judge — December 20, 1902 — page 2: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis This is primarily **advertising, not editorial content**. It's a full-page advertisement for Williams' Shaving Soap from The J.B. Williams Co., with locations in London, Paris, Glastonbury Connecticut, Dresden, and Sydney. The image depicts a scene titled "Christmas Morning on de Ole Plantation" showing what appears to be enslaved people receiving shaving products as gifts. The advertisement uses this nostalgic plantation imagery to market shaving soap, claiming it brings "joy and gladness" to "shaving" year-round. By modern standards, this represents deeply offensive racial imagery and exploitation of slavery-era nostalgia for commercial purposes—a common advertising practice in early 20th-century America that romanticized plantation life while ignoring its brutal realities.