Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, September 1921 · page 64 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #27 — page 64: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical piece targets 1920s "flappers"—young women who challenged Victorian conventions through bobbed hair, makeup, and independent behavior. The humor works on multiple levels: **The main article** mocks the flapper's pretended innocence. She claims her beauty stems from natural radiance and simplicity, but actually relies on "rows and rows of expensive jars" (cosmetics). The joke: she deceives men into thinking her appeal is artless naivety, when she's actually calculating and experienced. **The follow-up quips** continue this theme of female deception and sexual innuendo (the "blushing young thing" with ambiguous "expectations"; the "Roll Your Own" cigarette reference implying loose morals). **The final joke** plays on the flapper's contradiction: she demands a husband with "common sense," but the author suggests no sensible man would marry someone so obviously duplicitous. The satire reflects anxiety about women's changing roles—presenting flappers as manipulative, materially driven, and sexually knowing, contradicting their claimed innocence.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
62 Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang Philosophy of the Modern Flapper By Jane Gaites. Tonight when you shall gather me in your strong loving arms and marvel at the radiance of my eyes, the golden glamour of my hair, the velvety softness of my pink cheeks, while you tell me you love me, I shall smile. And you will be content thinking that I smile because of love for you. You will wonder at my naivete, at my simplicity, and innocence. You do not know of my rows and rows of expensive jars that make me beautiful. You do not guess that untold experience has made me “simple.” And when you draw me even closer to you and kiss me again, more passionately, while you smile at my sweet demureness and simplicity, I too will smile, because with all your vast knowledge of women—dear boy, you are so simple! * * * “This falls just a little below my expectations,” said the blushing young thing to her dressmaker as she surveyed herself in the mirror. As to what the blushing young thing meant by expectations, you can use your own judgment. * * * No, gentle reader, the bull durham outfit is not responsible for the practice: “Roll Your Own,” * * * “The man I marry must have common sense,” she said. But the party broke up when I remarked, “He won’t have.”