Life — June 23, 1921 — page 5: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis of Life Magazine Cartoon This sketch by H.M. Cravay depicts four fashionable women in an interior setting, examining what appears to be eyebrow styling. The caption reads: "Does she pencil her eyebrows?" / "That's evidently where she draws the line." This is a **visual pun about makeup and social propriety**. The joke plays on "drawing the line"—a phrase meaning to set a boundary or limit. Taken literally with the eyebrow pencil context, it suggests the woman's eyebrows reveal her personal standards or limits regarding cosmetic enhancement. The cartoon satirizes **early 20th-century anxieties about women's makeup use**, which was then considered scandalous or indicative of loose morality. By focusing on eyebrow penciling specifically, it mocks how people judged women's character based on cosmetic choices—suggesting one's makeup habits literally "draw the line" of one's respectability.