Berryman answers the Commission on the Status of Women, October 1963

Jim Berryman's Washington Star cartoon of 14 October 1963 surrounds a woman in furs and pearls with labeled appliances and a second car while she reads that President Kennedy's Commission on the Status of Women found "They still get the worst of it."

The drawing

A woman in a fur wrap and pearls stands among boxes and machines, each one labeled. A convertible beside her has a plate that reads "2nd Car." She holds a paper reporting the findings of President Kennedy's commission on women. The catalog title gives her line: "I just didn't realize I was so bad off."

AIR CONDITIONER

HI-FI

PRE-COOKED DINNER

T-V

DEEP FREEZE

ELECTRIC DISHWASHER

AUTOMATIC LAUNDRY

RADIO

2nd CAR

J.F.K.'s COMMISSION TO STUDY STATUS OF AMERICAN WOMEN REPORTS: "THEY STILL GET THE WORST OF IT"

JIM BERRYMAN WASHINGTON STAR

How the joke works

The method is contrast. A pile of consumer goods is set against a headline that says women are worse off, and the reader is left to conclude that the headline is silly. FRAME tags it card stacking and calls that a weak fit; contrast is the real engine.

The pile answers a question the commission did not ask, at least in the words the cartoon prints. A dishwasher is not a wage, a contract, a seat on a jury, or a credit account in one's own name. The woman in the drawing is also one woman, and a wealthy one; the cartoon offers her as the measure for all of them. Beyond that one quoted line, nothing on the sheet says what the commission found, so the reader is invited to laugh at a report without reading it. That is the cartoon's weakness as an argument, and it is fair to say so while granting that a newspaper cartoonist is entitled to his skepticism of a presidential commission.

From a liberty angle the useful question is the one the joke skips: whether the law treated two citizens differently because one was a woman. Prosperity does not settle that. Equal treatment does. Berryman's cartoons from the same year on other domestic questions include Let Me Through! on the Senate calendar and A Flower Tries to Grow in Birmingham.

Record and rights

Washington Evening Star, cartoonist Jim Berryman, held in the Jim Berryman Political Cartoons series of the Records of the U.S. Senate at the National Archives, NAID 5743302, retrieved 3 October 2026. FRAME records the rights as public domain (U.S. government work).