Student Humor
For years, college students have expressed themselves through humor. The Gargoyle was a student publication started in 1909 that ran for around 100 years, and while their illustrations and articles may have been all in good fun, they certainly showed the attitudes towards women on campus.
After debuting this cover that featured a ditzy representation of a coed, the Gargoyle received many comments from offended readers. Throughout the years of its publication, the Gargoyle prided itself on its ability to test the boundaries of publication in a way that some found distasteful.1
Many sexist ideas played out on the pages of humor magazines, as they still do today. Here, a female student sexually leans over a professor's desk. The idea of the MRS degree, a play on words and the idea that women go to college to find a husband, is still joked about today. This same sentiment is represented in a less subtle way in this comic from 1931 that describes the journey of four young women at the University of Michigan and questions their motives in obtaining an education.
