Judge — September 30, 1916 — page 16: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a single-panel joke cartoon from Judge magazine, set at the Beverly Country Club in Chicago. Two women (Estelle and Hermione) discuss why their friend Beatrice ended her engagement to Jimmy. The humor relies on a double entendre: Jimmy, while giving Beatrice golf instruction, told her to "keep her head down and bend her knees"—standard golf technique. However, Beatrice's refusal to do this "for anyone" suggests she interpreted (or pretended to interpret) his instruction as overly demanding or controlling behavior in their relationship, using the innocent golf advice as a pretext to break the engagement. The joke satirizes both the literal awkwardness of golf instruction between romantic partners and, more broadly, the social dynamics and marital expectations of the era. The cartoon mocks both Beatrice's apparent oversensitivity and the complications that arise when instruction mingles with courtship.