Life, 1927-08-25 · page 2 of 36
Life — August 25, 1927 — page 2: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **satirical advertisement** from Life magazine promoting better merchandise and advertising practices. The cartoon depicts a man reading ads while a woman asks what he's reading. His response—that he's "heading the ads"—is the joke: he's so absorbed in advertisements that they've become his primary reading material. The text argues that advertising has become ubiquitous in American life (appearing "seven days a week"), replacing substantive news about important matters. The satire critiques how advertising has infiltrated daily life, making consumers dependent on product information rather than meaningful content. The signature "Andy Consumer" personifies the average American as someone whose life is shaped by commercial messaging, making this a commentary on consumer culture's growing dominance in early-to-mid 20th century America.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LIFE DONATES THIS SERIES IN BEHALF OF BETTER MERCHANDISE IMPROVE SEVEN DAYS A WEEK— AND YOU’VE IMPROVED LIFE \SH day used to be one- venth of life. And yet there are still people who don’t read washing machine ads. (In spite of "em, advertising sold over a mil- lion dollars’ worth of washing ma- chines last year.) From the standpoint of the Andy Consumers, washing ma- chine news is a whole lot more im- portant than the doings of the diplomats, the tangles in the tariff. or the juice on the latest New Jersey murder. Monday was hectic at our house until we read about and bought a Sousem Washer and Monday is a seventh of a week out our way Looking over the present Andy Consumer week, hour by hour, | THE NATION. ADVERTISING MONE figure advertising has made it several times as good for living purposes as weeks used to be. Ad- vertising has taken away drudg- eries one by one and given us little conveniences and luxuries one by one. Most of us now live adver- tising seven days a week and don't know it You remark we'd all hear abou everything sooner or later, anyway. But the advantage is, adverti gets a good thing all over America in a month. In the old days you used to be dead before the word got around I say, give me regular reading matter for trivialities, but give me ads for the low-down on things that really affect me. 4 | ADVERTISER BETS HIS THAT HIS PRODUCT IS RIGHT comicbooks.cort