The Wasp — 1893 — page 219: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This satirical cartoon mocks a contemporary fashion trend—the "dude straw hat." The comic strip shows various absurd scenarios where characters use this hat as a practical tool rather than wear it: as a fishing net, a boat, a container for catching fish, and other improvisational purposes. The humor targets wealthy or fashionable "dudes" (a term for idle, well-dressed young men) whose expensive accessories prove useless. By depicting the hat serving mundane, working-class functions, the cartoonist satirizes the impracticality and pretension of fashionable society. The page includes advertisements for local San Francisco businesses ("The Cleveland" bicycles, Lyon's tailor shop) and promotes *Wasp* magazine itself as "the best weekly medium on the Pacific Coast."