An optical illusion by James Montgomery Flagg combining a romantic image with a view of the eastern hemisphere. Below is a "Scale of Smiles." At least one author sees more here than Flagg may have contemplated: "the Gibson Girl is the center of the world and developing nations her accessories. By at once taming the dark continent and Asian menace, urging her male suitor to foreign conquest all while creating boundaries against the very foreign element she appropriates as part of her sexual iconography, this 'Map of the World As Seen by Him' is more imperative than we might imagine." Patterson 2005, 180.
For a 1907 postcard version of this map, see Bryars 2014, 31. For another cartographic cover of Life Magazine by Flagg, see ID #2224, "The World: Good Versus Evil," 1908.
The collection includes a number of related maps; see Subject > Romance/Love/Marriage.
