Life, 1923-03-29 · page 14 of 40
Life — March 29, 1923 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous essay about a wife's shopping habits, particularly at the Cordon Bleu restaurant. The author describes her husband's complaint that she tires of mending socks and instead buys new things—illustrating how purchasing provides more satisfaction than domestic drudgery. The essay jokes about women's consumer behavior and includes a dig at other wives, particularly "Mrs. Chelsea Perry," described as "awfully rich" and pretentious. The author contrasts her own affordable lunch choices with Perry's expensive tastes. The bottom cartoon depicts a Harvard/Vassar graduate couple discussing marriage statistics. The joke reveals that married women average more children than men—a facetious punchline playing on obvious biological facts, satirizing academic pretension and gender roles in 1920s marriage.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
* LIFE My Husband Says HAT I can go anywhere I like to lunch, when I go to town shopping. So I go to the Cordon Bleu. It’s just a little French café, but I meet such interesting people there. I troubled a lady for the salt, one day, cr. and she told me that she mended gloves for a shop, all day long; and she gets so tired of mending that she just hates to mend her stockings. So she inks her heels. I think it is such a clever idea. But she’s awfully glad the other holes don’t show, be- cause she says she wouldn't care to wear ink anywhere else. Her husband is an artist, and he wears the cutest, sharp little goatee; and a big bow tie in a heavenly shade of red. I wanted to get one like it for my husband; but he said he’d feel like a nut in it. He says that I must try to smother the maternal in- stinct, or whatever it is that inspires me to buy things for him to wear. But I think the bow softens the line of the goatee, and they are ever so happy together. I mean the artist and his wife are. And they talk about sunshine in dark places, and things like that; and I love to sit at their table. But I was late yesterday, because I had to exchange a lot of Easter presents that I didn’t like; and I think sales persons are so slow when one is exchanging. So every chair but one was taken. Mrs. Chelsea Pherry sat opposite; and she is awfully rich, sometimes. She was eating the first special for that day; and it was fifty cents, and a Hamburg steak, with tomato sauce, I thought it looked lovely, like a little rock in a henna lake. And it was garnished with a perfectly stunning dill pickle. I said wasn’t it a charming café; and she said, quite haughtily, I thought: “I NEVER lunch here. I AL- WAYS go to the Ritzraine.” I said I loved to come to the Cordon Bleu, on the days when my husband lunched at the Rotary. She said, that her husband said, that he wouldn’t bathe in-the same ocean with the Rotarians. But my husband said that I must not feel bad; for her husband was only jealous because he couldn’t join. He said that every man who knows her husband calls him everything but his first name. | iN i} Ht | Nr Harvard Graduate: The members of my class who have married have had an average of a little less than two children. Vassar Graduate: Isn’t that remarkable? The married women of my class have averaged al- most three. I wonder what that proves? “Oh, not much. Simply that women have more children than men.” comicbooks.com