Judge — January 26, 1929 — page 10: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis of "Life-Cycles of the Day" This satirical comic strip by Gardner Rea depicts seven stages of daily life targeting college students and young adults. Each panel mocks contemporary social behaviors: 1. **Women arriving** with excessive luggage ("Lafayette, we are here") 2. **Boy Scouts** on bicycles ("just a little stiff from wheeling") 3. **Women motorcyclists** labeled with derogatory terms about feminine hygiene 4. **A motorist** with crude references to bodily odors 5. **A car advertising sugar/sweets** as mood-lifters for loneliness 6. **An "old stuff" vehicle** carrying outdated trends 7. **A car full of chaos** labeled "excuse my dust" with complaints about "duties" The overall message satirizes the messiness, poor manners, and questionable hygiene of the era's youth culture. The repeated vehicle imagery suggests society's mobile, transient nature. The humor relies on period-specific anxieties about modernization, changing social norms, and generational behavior.