Life — January 23, 1919 — page 13: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This illustration depicts a naval or maritime scene, likely satirizing early 20th-century attitudes toward working-class romance and social pretension. A sailor sits while a woman in elegant dress stands before him. The caption reveals the joke: the woman laments that a shell broke the sailor's arm in two places. She claims she wouldn't mind that loss—only that he lost a beautiful mermaid tattoo on that arm, which "hit her flume in the face." The satire mocks the woman's superficiality: she prioritizes the aesthetic appeal of a tattoo over the man's actual injury. It also plays on period stereotypes about sailors' tattoos and working-class romanticism, while her refined speech contrasts comically with her shallow concern.