Judge — November 9, 1912 — page 14: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a humorous bedroom scene satirizing male anxiety about women's increasing independence and presence in traditionally male spaces. A man lies in bed, nervously insisting to "Mary" (likely his wife) that there's a woman hiding underneath—a paranoid reversal of the classic "something under the bed" fear. The satire targets early 20th-century anxieties about changing gender roles. The ornate, feminized bedroom décor (patterned wallpaper, decorative elements) reinforces the joke: the man feels so overwhelmed by women's expanding social sphere that he imagines female intrusion even in intimate domestic spaces. The caption's dramatic tone ("IS MAN COMING TO THIS?") suggests alarm at women's societal advancement, which *Judge* magazine treated with satirical commentary reflecting period concerns about women's suffrage and independence movements.