Uncovering Same-Sex Desire in Fin-de-siècle Advertising

In afin-de-siècle trade card (Figure 1), a blond woman sits in a bathtub, her slippers andclothes tossed at the foot of the tub, her bare knees peeking out of its rim, and her faceturned towards the viewer with a sly smile. The card has aflap that folds down from thecenter, at the line of the bathtub rim, tantalizing viewers with the prospect of the nuditythat will be revealed when the card is unfolded. Alas, opening the card shows the womanto be not nude at all: her ostensibly bare knees turn out to be the bald heads of two jollymen, delighted at the sight of her fully clothed self and the tray of drinks that she carries(Figure 2).Narratively, the reveal might make little sense, but narrative or contextual discontinu-ity is one consequence of the development of the trade card form. From the 1860s, asadvances of chromolithography increased the quality and decreased the cost of multico-lor printing, trade cards quickly became one of the most important, most visible methodsof advertising in America.