Life, 1883-07-26 · page 14 of 16
Life — July 26, 1883 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page presents satirical silhouettes about bathing customs and body image. The six vignettes humorously explain "How and Why We Bathe": **Top panels**: Children play in water because they enjoy it; adults swim for entertainment. **Middle panels**: A joke about clothing—thin men supposedly get larger suits while fat men get smaller ones (implying either tailoring incompetence or intentional irony). **Bottom panels**: Adults bathe to enjoy privacy/solitude, and to display their physiques to others. The satire mocks vanity, body consciousness, and the contradictory reasons people engage in social bathing—simultaneously seeking privacy and wanting to show themselves off. It's early-20th-century humor targeting human self-consciousness and hypocrisy around physical appearance and social bathing culture.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
BECAUSE THE DEAR CHILDREN ENJOY IT SO. 'Cos IT's BULLY FUN, WHY DO THE THIN MEN GET THE LARGEST SUITS? AND THE FAT MEN THE SMALL ONES? BECAUSE ONE CAN ENJOY HIMSELF BECAUSE IT 1S THE BEST CHANCE WE HAVE TO UNDISTURBED, SHOW OUR FIGURES. HOW AND WHY WE BATHE. comicbooks.com