The Wasp — 1890 — page 488: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a **racist advertisement** for Pears' Soap from *The Wasp*, a late 19th-century American satirical magazine. The image depicts a figure with exaggerated racist caricature features—darkened skin, prominent white eyes and teeth, and a crude smile—holding a bar of soap while greeting the viewer. The "joke" relies on a deeply offensive racial trope: the implication that Black people need soap to become "clean" or "civilized." This plays on common racist pseudoscience of the era that associated darker skin with uncleanliness. The ad exemplifies how mainstream American advertising openly employed racist imagery and messaging in this period, treating such caricatures as acceptable commercial and satirical content.