Life — July 15, 1920 — page 12: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Cooper's Sleeping Porch This page satirizes a common early-20th-century domestic dispute. The narrator visits his friend Cooper, who insists he sleep on the home's "sleeping porch"—an outdoor sleeping platform popular for health reasons during this era. The narrator humorously catalogs his miserable night: troubled by a strange bed, mosquitoes (the largest he's ever seen), and a milkman's early-morning delivery that crashes bottles down the street. The satire targets the fashion for sleeping porches as a health trend, mocking both Cooper's enthusiastic embrace of this supposedly beneficial practice and the narrator's reluctant compliance. The cartoon illustrates Cooper persuading the skeptical narrator to try this uncomfortable "fresh air" remedy, poking fun at wellness fads and their social pressure.