Life, 1896-04-02 · page 21 of 32
Life — April 2, 1896 — page 21: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two satirical pieces from *Life* magazine: **"Olympian Side Shows"** (the large illustration): A crowded, chaotic scene depicting various beauty and leisure services at what appears to be a fashionable resort or spa. The satire mocks the commercialization of beauty treatments and self-improvement marketed to wealthy women. **"A Leap Year Problem"**: A brief joke referencing the tradition that women could propose to men during leap years. The humor lies in uncertainty about which partner initiated the engagement between "Miss Prue" and "Old-boy." **"The Manicure"** (by Jessie M. Wood): The longest piece satirizes manicurists' manipulative sales tactics. It mocks how they flatter clients ("unusually beautiful hand"), oversell unnecessary treatments, and create mystique around beauty procedures. The critique extends to women desperate to recapture youth—wanting "skin of sixteen and the experience of fifty." The final paragraph warns against ostentatious charity. Overall, the page satirizes commercialized beauty culture and gender dynamics of the era, targeting both the services exploiting women and women's anxieties about appearance and aging.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
OLYMPIAN SIDE SHOWS. 269 A LEAP YEAR PROBLEM. ISS PRUE and Old- boy are to wed This Easter, everybody knows; And far and wide the question's spread : “Which was it really did propose?” THE MANICURE. ITH an eye whose weary brightness is vaguely suggestive of bella- donna, she studies your hand, and with medicated lips tells you convincingly that it is an unusually beautiful one, adding incidentally that more care should be bestow- ed upon it. She suggests ‘treatment ” once a week. Then she pro- ceeds to shrink it in hot water, to pare slices off it, and to file off corners until it feels quite three sizes smaller than usual and you feel convinced that weekly treatment would be fatal to it. She surmises, while she polishes what is left of your finger-nails as though they were boots, that you are an artist, by the shape of your hand. Her domain is faintly scented, and divided into secret chambers, which bear the mysterious inscriptions “FACE STEAMING" and “ELECTRIC TREAT- MENT FOR WRINK- LES." She appears to reign in this temple of mys- tery as high priestess of some occult science, that bestows new faces upon ladies who have worn out their old ones. She is very popular with ladies who are anxious to begin life all over again, with the skin of six- teen and the experience of fifty. ; Jessie M, Wood. HE charity which gives away that which it doesn’t want is more inclined to vaunt itself than any other kind.