The Wasp — 1894 — page 209: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon satirizes the then-fashionable bicycle bloomers worn by women. The joke plays on a conversation between two characters (Ethel and Maude) discussing a spooked horse: Ethel asks if Charlie brought the horse "down from his cattle ranch," and Maude replies it must be the bloomers frightening the animal, since the horse is "used to seeing calves." The humor relies on a visual pun: "bloomers" (the baggy pants women wore while cycling) sounds like actual flower blooms, while "calves" refers both to young cattle and to women's legs. The cartoon mocks the controversial bloomers as so unfamiliar and shocking in appearance that they would terrify livestock—reflecting conservative anxieties about women's athletic wear and changing gender norms in the bicycle era.