Life, 1925-08-13 · page 18 of 36
Life — August 13, 1925 — page 18: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Life magazine article satirizes American social and political discourse by framing the contemporary moral panic over "necking" (kissing and petting) as equivalent to serious national debates. The satire operates on multiple levels: The magazine deliberately conflates the trivial question of dating behavior with weightier issues like slavery and the Dred Scott Decision, deliberately citing fake legal precedents ("Thurlow vs. Hoag"). It mocks both moralists condemning "necking" and those defending it with absurd reasoning. The cartoon (artist: R. Cannell) illustrates the hypocrisy—showing a figure labeled with constitutional and moral objections while simultaneously engaging in the condemned behavior. Responses reveal period attitudes: one writer admits shooting three daughters over the practice; another suggests girls bear no responsibility for dark-place behavior. The humor lies in readers taking this frivolous "survey" with unwarranted seriousness, exposing how Americans project constitutional language onto personal morality.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
- LIFE Would YOU Marry a NE of the biggest problems con- O fronting the nation to-day is whether or not Kansas shall be a slave state or a free state. A great many people think that slavery is a bad thing. A great many people defend it. The editors of this magazine have decided to put the question squarely up to its readers. Last month it asked for letters on the subject. The question as framed was as follows: “Would You Marry a Girl Who ‘Necks’?” Thousands of replies were received. We have not space to print all of them here, and even if we had we wouldn't. There was quite a lot of confusion incident to a misprint in the edition which went to the Pacific Coast (caught and rec- tified in all later editions) which made the ques- tion read: “Would You Marry a Girl Who Mecks?” The answers from the Pacific Coast were therefore based on “mecking” instead of “necking” and could not be used. This is un- fortunate, as there were some very ingenious replies. So far as we know, there is no such word as “meck,” but the consensus of opinion seemed to be that it was a bad thing for a girl to do. Of those who wrote on the subject as it was originally intended, eight thousand nine hun- dred were against “necking.” Of these, more than half based their objection on constitutional grounds. “I think that we ought to leave it to the individual states to decide,” is the way many expressed it, and many more agreed with them. Several cited the Dred Scott Decision’ and Thurlow vs. Hoag, U. S. 11475-3795, Of those who defended “necking,” the ma- jority felt that a girl should not be held re- sponsible for anything that is done in the dark. “A girl is, after all, only a little boy grown up,” wrote one reader. Or, as another phrased it, “would you want your sister to marry one of them?” Most of the defenses of this prac- tice came from towns under 400,000. We have gone through all the answers thor- oughly, and have taken into account the ques- tions of legibility and spelling. Some corre- spondents gave their replies in sketches and wash drawings. These were thrown out. A lot of our readers never wrote in at all. These were also disregarded. If a reader didn’t take the trouble to let us know what he or she thought, he or she could not expect to be repre- sented in the symposium. Following are some of the best and most typical of the replies. Judge for yourself which side of the question wins. EAR Neckinc Epitor: What is the matter with the girl of to-day? Drinking, dancing, smoking, rouging, bobbing her hair, vagrancy, and resisting an officer—where is it all going to end? If their mothers would bring them up differently, there would be no more of these “necking” parties. I have six girls of my own and have already shot three of them, so I know what I am talking about. One Motner’s Way. EAR Ebrtor: In my profession as weight-guesser, nat- urally I meet many modern girls, and would say that the majority of them permit men to hold their hands, make faces at them, etc., and think no more of it than of a bad cold. I certainly would not marry a girl of this type, because a Some of Our \Reac Their Viewson National Probl ‘Necking’ a Menac a Whole Lot of Decoratior Rube Gold comicbooks.com