The Wasp — 1894 — page 500: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon satirizes Japanese aesthetics through an Art Nouveau style (mimicking illustrator Aubrey Beardsley's famous decorative approach). The image depicts two fashionable women with exaggerated features alongside grotesque wasp and insect imagery—the magazine's namesake mascots used for satire. The caption quotes mock-tragic dialogue about "Yum-Yum" and "beautiful mildeweth chrysanthemum blossoms," parodying Western romanticization of Japanese culture as delicate and exotic. By juxtaposing this sentimentality with the crude, menacing insects, *The Wasp* mocks the pretentiousness of Japonisme—the late 19th/early 20th-century Western fad for Japanese art and design. The satire suggests this aesthetic fashion is ultimately superficial and ridiculous.