Life — November 24, 1910 — page 6: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Life Magazine's Suffragette Contest This page documents a satirical 1910-1911 contest where Life magazine invited men to submit reasons why they should not marry suffragettes—women advocating for voting rights. The contest offers $300 to the winner. The left column presents a poem titled "I Would Not Marry a Suffragette," depicting a suffragette as argumentative and neglectful of domestic duties. The right column offers anti-suffrage arguments, including claims that women seeking political rights are unfit for marriage and motherhood. The humor targets suffragettes through exaggerated stereotypes: that political engagement makes women shrewish, unfeminine, and bad wives. This reflects widespread anti-suffrage sentiment of the era, when women's political activism was mocked as threatening to traditional gender roles and family structures. The contest itself was a popular satirical device Life used to generate reader engagement while advancing political viewpoints.