Life — August 13, 1925 — page 5: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "Alice at the News-Stand" by Newman Levy This is a satirical piece where Alice (from *Alice in Wonderland*) encounters the White Rabbit and Mad Hatter at a magazine stand. The satire targets popular magazine genres and their editorial strategies of the era. The White Rabbit promotes magazines with sensationalist content—"Sloppy Stories," "Racy Stories," "Snippy Stories"—designed to attract readers through lurid covers featuring "pretty girls in a one-piece bathing suit." When Alice asks what distinguishes these magazines, the characters reveal the satire: magazines stimulate circulation through provocative imagery and questionable fiction rather than literary merit. The piece mocks both the magazine industry's cynical marketing tactics and readers' shallow preferences, using the familiar Carroll characters to frame critiques of American popular culture's descent into sensationalism.