Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, September 1921 · page 35 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #27 — page 35: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous editorial defending women's bare legs against moral critics, likely responding to 1920s debates over hemlines and modesty. The piece mocks puritanical "prude morality mongers" and elderly "grannies" who condemned the rising hemlines of the flapper era. The satire works on multiple levels: it ridicules a character named Gus for claiming all women are bow-legged (disqualifying him from moral judgment), dismisses Puritan outrage over exposed knees as overwrought, and argues that immodesty is "relative." The final joke—that unattractive legs "don't get there" on stage or screen anyway—suggests that only conventionally beautiful women wear short skirts, so the moral panic is baseless. The piece reflects Jazz Age irreverence toward Victorian sexual propriety, using exaggeration and casual crudeness typical of Whiz Bang's comic style.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang 33 to the naked eye unashamed. Why then, is the feminine form divine the most indecent product of the Creator's handiwork? We have asked Gus and he says that all the girls of his acquaintance are bow-legged. That lets Gus out of the symposium. Perhaps some of the prude morality mongers can enlighten a poor, hard-working farmer from Robbinsdale. Feminine modesty may be only shoe-high and roll-top stockings an incitement to masculine pruriency—but, thank heaven, most of us are not fashioned that way. The censorial Puritan may blush like an over-ripe tomato at the complete revelation of the feminine knee- joint. However, no masculine connoisseur is going to do an emotional handspring over such a trivial, especially when it is common observation that three-quarters of the lower quarters, and other quarters that one sees parading down Main street nowadays, are too fat or too skinny or too gnarled to raise much of a ripple on a regular guy's masculinity. Immodesty is a relative term and a silk stocking, properly stocked, is not our idea of indecency. Therefore, we don't incline to the grannies' view that the bare leg on stage or screen is immodest for the very reason that the fat leg and the skinny leg and the bow-legged leg don't get there. Or, at least, they don't stay there long.