Life, 1923-07-05 · page 8 of 40
Life — July 5, 1923 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page features a sketch and satirical diary entry. The illustration shows two women in what appears to be a bedroom or dressing room, with one seated and another attending to her hair. The caption quotes dialogue about a man's fashion choice: "dark blue ties with white dots." "Mrs. Pop's Diary" is a humor column dated June 20th-30th. The entry mocks the author's experiences with a permanent wave hairstyle treatment, describing it sarcastically as torture ("infernal machine"). It also satirizes her husband's inattention and her own efforts to engage him in intellectual conversation about eighteenth-century history, which he ignores. The piece humorously contrasts her intellectual pretensions with domestic frustrations, typical of 1920s satirical women's humor focusing on marriage dynamics and gender roles.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Alive Herveyz “HE WEARS THOSE DARLING DARK BLUE TIES WITH WHITE DOTS IN THEM.” “yes! I LIKE THAT IN A MAN.” Ces Lops Diary Early up, having slept ill through the flapping of a window shade which I had not had the stamina ‘to arise in the night and ad- just....To a coiffeur’s after breakfast to have my hair waved by the process which is called permanent, albeit it lasteth but three or four months, and never before did I realize the force of the statement, J] faut souffrir pour étre belle. No fewer than fourteen attendants did twist and tweak and encase my poor tresses, attaching the cylindrical results to an infernal machine, under which I sat for three hours, looking like the Empress of China and feeling like Absalom. But I did come away with a great sense of security, as if wind and rain might now do their worst, etc... .To Marge Boothby’s to show off my head, and she had been again to testify at the investiga- tion they are making of the iniquitous customs men who were said to have solicited bribes, and was aghast to find at the rereading of her previous testimony that every word she uttered had been set down, so that the report was punctuated with such items as, Miss Boothby said: I’m almost crazy. Miss Boothby said: I’m scared to death, June 29th Lord! I hope I may never be brought into a witness-box, being certain they would have me up before a committee of alienists the minute I quitted it. June I fear that my husband, poor wretch, is be- 30th coming discursive, for he will engage my attention on the most abstract subjects during the earliest hours of the day. This morning he fell upon the eighteenth century, and was somewhat wroth with me when I did excuse myself to attend to the ordering. I must see to it that he doth not develop into the senile raconteur. . . .Anne Hildreth to luncheon with me, and her talk depressed me greatly. I have forgotten the exact assignment of the circles of the Inferno, but am confi- dent there is a reservation for women who feel it their duty as friends to tell you unplgasant things for your own good. . . .Sam home early, and cheered me with the news that Jack Mitchell had referred a bonding firm to him, and one of the questions asked was, Has he ever been suspected of drinking? ... At Pung-Chow, the Chinese (Continued on page 31) comicbooks.com