Life, 1910-08-04 · page 8 of 44
Life — August 4, 1910 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical piece mocks overweight people through exaggerated physical descriptions using alliteration ("Fabulously Fleshy Façades," "Flaccid Flirts," "Fubby Frumps"). The accompanying cartoon shows two rotund figures in formal dress, presented as objects of ridicule and entertainment. The humor relies on body-shaming—treating obesity as inherently comedic and worthy of mockery. The "Local Items" section announces upcoming humorous issues of *Life* magazine, suggesting this content represented mainstream entertainment of the era. By modern standards, this represents crude, cruel satire targeting physical appearance. The piece treats fat people as spectacles for public amusement rather than as individuals, reflecting early-20th-century attitudes that made such mockery culturally acceptable in satirical publications.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
In next week's LIFE, dated August 11. S a el —— Local Items There is a fortune telling feature that begins in Sep- tember, which will interest every human being on earth. Our Thanksgiving, Christmas and Auto numbers are already up to one Hundred Pages. We have requested the leading humorists of the country to advise us as to whether it will be safe to issue a Humorous Number. Their replies (later) are absorbingly interesting. COMING NUMBERS Hell Humorous Goody- Goody Adam and Eve Midnight Subscription, $5.00 Canadian $5.52 Fat Folks Furnish Fun Fair, Full Faces. Fabulously Fleshy Facades. Felicitous, Fugacious Facetiousness Frankly and Fantastically Fulminated. Festive Fantasmagoria. Fibrous Fakes. Farcical Fancies. Florid Freaks. Folly Formulated Fundamentally. Fubby Frumps. Flaccid Flirts. Flourishing Fronts. Fatuous Farinaceous Figures. Flamboyant Feminine Frazzles. (Phew!) As We Pass (Het The above furiously philological frumpery has completely flabbergasted us. Yet with our dying breath we will still exclaim ‘Obey that impulse, and subscribe to LIFE ere it is too late.” We do this on principle. We want everybody to be happy. Don’t you have trouble enough anyway without being outside of LIFE’S con- tented concatenation of contemporaneous— (never mind the rest. You know what LIFE is). Once a reader of LIFE—always an optimist. It can be done for Five Dollars. Foreign, $6.04 comicbooks.com