Life, 1913-11-13 · page 27 of 40
Life — November 13, 1913 — page 27: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**"Woman's Impenetrable Age"** satirizes women's use of cosmetics and fashion to obscure their age. The article humorously argues that determining a woman's actual age has become impossible—women wear false hair, lacquer their faces, use porcelain tooth fillings, and mentally "make themselves up." A sixty-year-old will dress and behave like seventeen. The joke turns political: even woman suffrage in California hasn't solved this mystery, as the state omits age questions "out of courtesy." The satire mocks both women's deception and society's inability to handle the truth about aging. **"The Mecca of Children"** criticizes American child-rearing. It contrasts a thirteen-year-old Italian boy who organized a youth rights league with American children, who are divided into two classes: those exploited for labor and those indulged by capital. The real complaint: American children are being corrupted by amusement palaces featuring moving pictures and fantastic apparatus rather than traditional schooling—their appetites are being "jaded" by entertainment excess.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE EVERY-DAY BATTLE Woman's Impenetrable Age r was hoped that some way of telling the age of women would have re- sulted from woman suffrage, but even this is to be denied us, In California, where woman suffrage is in use, the question, “What is your age?” is omitted out of courtesy. Thus our last hope is gone. The great difficulty is that in trying to discover how old a woman is, there is no standard. You can tell a horse's age by his teeth, but that is no criterion in a woman, now that porcelain fillings have come. If you could separate (or extricate) a woman from the things she puts oa to make her young, some progress might be made. But women no longer wait to do this until they are old enough to lack things. Young girls wear false hair now. They also lacquer their faces. Also, in their mental habits, they make themselves up. A woman of sixty (this at a guess) will make up her mind to look like seventeen. This lady also dances the tango and cavorts like a colt. There are, indeed, no more old ladies who deserve the name. The mystery of woman's age is greater than ever. And it promises to be buried forever in future politics. “CXILLET says he hates the political atmosphere which pervades Washington.” “Why doesn’t he get some President to make him Sccretary of State?” The Mecca of Children YOUNG Florentine lad of thir- teen has organized a school- boys’ league for the vindication of the rights of youth. He says that elders impose their ideas on youth, who are stunted and downtrodden, The only mistake that this young man has made is in not having been born in America. He would here learn that children are divided into two classes; namely, those who labor for Capital those whom Capital labors to please, Children here, it is quite true, are still obliged to go to school, But this ancient task centre is rapidly being superseded by a kind of amusement palace in which moving pictures vic with all kinds of ‘fantastic apparatus to tempt the jaded appetites of our modern child. and comicbooks.com