Life, 1922-09-21 · page 7 of 36
Life — September 21, 1922 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous essay about a man's struggles with facial expressions and self-presentation. The narrator admits he cannot master appropriate expressions—he tries different eyebrow arrangements to look businesslike but fails. He compensates by buying a red roadster car and driving it around Broadway to appear successful, though his wife suspects he's just "shifting gears." The accompanying cartoon shows a mother instructing her daughter Pamela to brush her teeth—a task Pamela claims to hate, though her mother says she always asks her to do it. The joke appears to be about children's contradictory behavior or reluctant obedience. This was apparently a popular magazine feature satirizing everyday human foibles and domestic situations in early 20th-century American life.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LIFE Confessions of a Feeble-Minded Man O you ever make magnificent gestures to yourself in a mir- ror, and try on different expressions, all impressive, but none of which somehow seem to fit your face? It’s a fool habit. I don’t know why it is, but I have a great deal of trouble fitting my face with the right kind of expressions. Perhaps it’s an odd size. Sometimes, after I have tried on one or two, particularly unbecoming, I think that no expression at all would suit it better. \nd then I look at it as it is, and realize that there must be some arrangement that will be effective. Anything but that dumb, stricken collection of features. lf only I had that queer, three- cornered smile like Roger Singleton, the banker, now; or that trick of Cyril Tenderfoot. who takes the heavy 16les in Western melodramas— that bit of business he does with his eyebrows, you know. That would go well with my type of nose. So I try raising one eyebrow and lowering the other, but only succeed in distorting the whole lower half of the face in the attempt. It doesn’t look right, and it feels worse. And how in the name of Pan, or whoever was the God of Merriment, does that three-cornered smile go on? The way I have it, it is just as merry as a New England Conscience. hen I wonder if that novel I haven't written will go big. I have it finished and published in the split fraction of a second: and to my great delight I am collecting fabulous roy- alties. I make suave gestures to my publishers when they apologize that it’s only in its hundredth thousand. I buy a large red roadster, of tre- mendous power, and drive it up Broadway, bowing to friends on the sidewalk. me! The comes in, “What on earth are you doing?” she says, looking at me in amaze- ment. “Are you taking those ‘shad- owy boxing’ exercises again?” A natural confusion freezes up my faculties. I should take advantage of this opening and say, “Yes.” But my reasoning power is gone. “None—no,” I manage to stam- mer. “I was just—I was just prac- ticing the speech I was going to make at the Dinner of Insistent Ad- vertising Men.” “If you ask me,” says my wife, make gestures for after- dinner speeches. At least, not the way you make them.” Of course she had no way of knowing that I was just shifting gears in the large red roadster, I suppose. W. D. Success has not spoiled next moment my wife wouldn't Pamela (who has been told to brush her teeth): Mother, you always ask me to do that, and it’s my-favorite thing I hate to do. comicbooks.com