I came across this nice image in an early issue of the journal Phong Hóa.
A wife is surprised to see her husbands powdering his face, and he responds that it’s “equal rights for men and women.”
The discussion of “equal rights” in the 1920s and 1930s was of course more about increasing the rights of women so that they could enjoy the same rights as men.
But in this image, it is the man who wants some “women’s rights.”
This was meant to be funny. Now, however, it would be interesting to see how the person who made this image would react if he saw a men’s makeup advertisement like this one from contemporary Japan. . .
I have read and heard about young men in Hanoi in the late 1930s who used make-up. They seem to have been affluent and French educated.
If people were doing it, then my guess would be that Vu Trong Phung probably made fun of them somewhere.
I think, in fact that image (in Phong Hoa) maybe had anti-“equal-rights for women” tendency more than mery funny one!
“anti” equal rights? Or is it critiquing the fact that people talk about equal rights (because that had been talked about in journals and newspapers by that point) but that they don’t actually exist?
Yea, I realize that it is not simply there for fun, but I often struggle to understand what exactly the point of some of these comics were at that time.