Judge, 1924-04-12 · page 11 of 36
Judge — April 12, 1924 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "Outlines of History" — Explanation for Modern Readers This is a visual pun about female fashion silhouettes across historical periods. The cartoon compares the "outlines" (body shapes) created by women's clothing in different eras: Egyptian, Greek, and French (Louis XVI period), leading to "modern times" or the "Synthetic Gin Period." The joke conflates historical "outlines" (as in textbooks) with the literal body contours produced by each era's fashion. The final figure, representing modern times, is drawn in the 1920s flapper style—slim, straight, and lacking curves—which the cartoonist satirically calls the "Synthetic Gin Period," linking the austere silhouette to Prohibition-era drinking. The satire mocks both women's fashion's constant transformation and the notion that history can be meaningfully reduced to simple visual outlines. The title suggests history books are as trivial and subject to arbitrary change as hemlines. Drawn by John Held Jr., a famous Jazz Age illustrator.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
OUTLINES OF HISTORY Take, for instance, The Outlines of the Egyptian, The Phairest for the Pha- raoh’s—what? —then the Classical Out- lines of the Greek as told in Song, Story, and Priceless Marbles —now the Outlines during the Reign of Louis | | } —which all leads up to Mod- // ern times or, what we might term, the Synthetic Gin | Period, thus proving that 9 History is not at all interest- ing without lines. / { { \ Drawn by Jonn Hein, Ix. ‘| comicbooks.com