The Wasp — 1879 — page 227: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page contains two distinct cartoons mocking elaborate entertainment and social pretension. **Top section ("St. Andrews Masked Ball"):** Satirizes an exclusive masquerade event where attendees "park your dollar and you take your choice." The accompanying chart lists absurd character types—"best formed," "blonde," "luscious," etc.—suggesting the event amounts to commodified selection of attractive attendees, reducing participants to merchandise. **Bottom section:** Depicts acrobats performing dangerous stunts (somersaults against a "revolving circular saw") labeled "morbid entertainments for geese, gulls and donkeys under the patron." This mockingly compares the audience to animals, suggesting they've degraded themselves by attending such brutish spectacles for amusement. Both cartoons criticize Gilded Age excess and the debasement of social and entertainment standards among the wealthy and fashionable.