Judge — August 11, 1923 — page 14: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page presents four satirical vignettes about different types of romantic love, drawn in the distinctive style of John Held Jr., a famous Jazz Age illustrator. The sketches mock various social classes and behaviors: 1. **"The Sheik and Sheba type"** references 1920s popular culture—the exotic, passionate romance style 2. **"Love during the necking period"** satirizes modern youth behavior (necking was contemporary slang for kissing/petting) 3. **"Love in high society"** ridicules wealthy couples where money/materialism drives the relationship (shown via dollar signs) 4. **"Love purely paternal"** depicts an older man with a young woman, suggesting transactional rather than romantic love The humor derives from reducing different romantic scenarios to crude stereotypes and exposing their artificiality or mercenary nature. Held captures 1920s social anxieties about changing courtship norms and class-based hypocrisy.