Life — February 9, 1911 — page 16: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This satirical page presents two caricatured "recipes" mocking professional types. The top map shows a character's weekly route across what appears to be the United States. **"The Portrait Painter"** ridicules society portraitists as fraudulent—literally "liars in paint" who use pretentious French phrases ("onvelopay" for *en voilà*, "Plew faseel" for *plus facile*) to sound sophisticated while charging clients weekly fees. **"A Strap-Hanger"** sarcastically "cooks" a Harlem goat (a reference to working-class transit riders packed into streetcars—"strap-hangers" holding overhead straps) by jamming them together with curses as seasoning. It's crude class satire depicting how ordinary commuters are treated like objects. Both mock pretension and mistreatment of different social classes through the cookbook metaphor—people as ingredients processed for profit or abuse.