Life, 1894-12-27 · page 32 of 53
Life — December 27, 1894 — page 32: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes the debate over women's appropriate clothing during the bicycle craze of the 1890s. The sketches depict Parisian women in the Bois de Boulogne (a fashionable park) cycling in various outfits. The satire targets American women "still debating" proper cycling attire. The text humorously notes the contradiction: women who considered standard bathing suits "immodest" must now reconcile this with cycling in practical, often revealing clothing. The sketches show different fashion solutions Parisian women adopted—some modest, others less so. The joke highlights Victorian-era anxieties about women's bodies and "proper" dress codes, while cycling represented newfound female mobility and independence. Parisian women's apparently pragmatic approach to athletic wear contrasts with American prudishness, mocking American hesitation to embrace functional fashion.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
HOW THEY ARE DOING IT IN PARIS. “TCHESE sketches are drawn from life, in the Bois de Boulogne may be of terest ome of our ¢ who are still debating as to just what they ought to wear, Women who have appeared n the beach in the usual bath- ing dress, and who find this costume immodest, will have to wrestle with consistency as best they ean. comicbooks.com