Judge — September 9, 1916 — page 7: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon satirizes early 20th-century women's fashion anxieties. The joke centers on the contradiction between two competing fashion trends: women wore increasingly high skirts (a relatively daring development for the era) paired with low shoes, which exposed their legs and stockings. The humor targets the embarrassment a fashionable woman experiences when her expensive new silk stockings develop "runs" (tears or snags in the fabric)—a common problem with delicate silk hosiery. The cartoon mocks how visible this fashion mishap becomes precisely because current style dictates exposed legs, making any stocking damage publicly humiliating rather than hidden. The bystanders' shocked reactions emphasize society's ongoing discomfort with women's changing fashion and exposed legwear.