The Wasp — 1879 — page 12: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# The Illustrated Wasp, Page 3 This page combines portrait medallions of **Napoleon Eugene Louis Jean Joseph** (son of Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie) with a satirical narrative about feminine fashion and aging. The text mocks a California woman's vanity, describing how she obsessed over fashion for twenty years, preserving an 1856 dress in hopes of recapturing her youth. The fashion illustrations (1856 vs. 1879) show the dramatic silhouette changes between these decades. The satire targets women's slavish devotion to fashion trends and their desperate attempts to deny aging. The "Anno Domini 2000!!!" section humorously speculates on future fashion absurdities. The overall joke: fashion-obsessed women are ridiculous in their futile resistance to time's passage.