Judge — March 8, 1924 — page 22: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This comic depicts a man shopping for hats with a male salesman. The sequence shows the customer rejecting multiple hats as uncomfortable or unflattering, each time asking to "see something else." The humor relies on a visual pun: "headwork" suggests intellectual effort, but the comic literally shows a man doing *head work*—trying on hats. The satire appears to target either the frustrations of men's fashion shopping or, more likely, the pretension of haberdashery sales clerks who claim superior expertise ("By George! I can beat you picking out hats"). The final panels show the customer finally satisfied with a hat that "fits me to a T," suggesting that comfort and proper fit matter more than the salesman's confident recommendations. The comic is straightforward physical comedy with mild social commentary about retail interactions and masculine vanity around hat fashion—a significant status symbol in early 20th-century America.