Judge, 1921-07-30 · page 12 of 36
Judge — July 30, 1921 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis: Judge Magazine Page This page contains two satirical pieces critiquing early 20th-century social attitudes about women. **"Her No Man's Land"** is a poem suggesting that women's inner lives remain unknowable to men—a philosophical critique framed as romantic mystery. **"Apropos of Cigarettes"** directly mocks male hypocrisy regarding women smoking. A husband reads an editorial by "Mere Man," a character opposing women's smoking as "high-minded" and morally superior. The wife brilliantly deconstructs this: she argues "Mere Man" conflates his personal opinion with collective morality, and that he's only known "bad" women who smoke. She predicts that once he meets a respectable woman who smokes, he'll reverse his position entirely—and society's "consensus" will shift with him. The satire targets how men rationalize prejudices as moral principles, and how social norms around women's behavior are arbitrarily enforced by those claiming objective standards. The cartoon illustrations (the "Perils of Motoring" and beach scene) provide visual comedy relief to the text-heavy social commentary.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Drawn by Maveice BeRrezov Her No Man’s Land By E. S. V. Z. I * you study the gentler sex you'll find There’s a No Man’s Land in a woman’s mind, Whatever she be, your friend or wife, You'll never know all of her mental life. The man you love, or the man you hate, Of him you can get the psychic weight, You can read his thoughts and you'll find the whole Of his inner self that we call his soul. woman can be to you aled that you fully knew, For just when you think that you under- stand, Her spirit will hide in her No Man’s Land! Apropos of Cigarettes (An Interlude.) By Hucu O'Connor HE Lovely Lady, as it occurred to him to think of her, smiled at him through the lamplight. “Is there anything interesting in the paper tonight?” she asked. “Perhaps,” he said, reaching for the newspaper. He would have preferred to watch the play of light and shadows brush- ing across her face. “I will read you something annoying to punish you.” “You can’t,” she said. “Ve he said, turning to the editorial page, “here is MERE MAN writing to the editor. He disapproves of smoking by women. The consensus of opinion is against it. The high-minded do not ap- prove of it. And here you have it—a cli- max of excommunication: The majority of right thinking people will not tolerate it! Aren’t you impressed, Lovely Lady?” “No,” she said. “Iam amused.” The lamplight shifted and moved across her Perits or Motorinc. face and smiled for her. “I think MERE Man is an egotist. A man who talks vaguely of the majority, and of the con- sensus of opinion, means simply ‘I myself’ many times over. I can see him frowning —pompously—at an imaginary, offending woman, while he delivers his disapproval. Each time he says high-minded, or right- thinking, he lays his open hand proudly on his own chest. And then he expects his offending woman to turn away in em- barrassment and repentance.” Her husband laid down his paper. He could watch her now. And he listened as well. “It means simply,” she said, “that MERE Man has never known a nice girl Drawn by Norway Axtnoxy “SOMEONE STEAL YOUR CLOTHES he has known only the bad ones, and so in his mind smoking is bound up exclusively with the bad. He might just as well ask the nice girls to stop dress- ing as attractively as they can, just because the bad ones dress attrac- tively.” Her husband admired the warm olive glow reflected from her arms and shoulders, and a high delight in her beauty filled him. She continued: her speculations, “Tt’s useless to reason with any one like Mere Man. He has a prejudice, not a conclusion; and reason is not what he needs. Just give him time, and one of these days he will meet with a nice girl who smokes and then he will de- clare himself just as convinced as he is now, but on the opposite side. Then the consensus of opinion of the high-minded and right-think- ing will accommodatingly reverse; and smoking by women will become plainly a matter of personal preference, like the choice of coffee for breakfast rather than warm milk.” She lighted a cigarette. “You have the most graceful hands,” he said. She smiled at him. “Lovely Lady is a nice new name,” she said, “I like it.” Impossible “That dog of mine knows as much as I do.” “T don’t doubt that, but I’ll bet he doesn’t know half as much as you think you do.” 2” “No, | just sTAYED A WEEK AT SPEND-IT-BY-THE-SEA.” 12