Flapper: A Woman Who Changed American Culture

Throughout the week, celebrity flappers such as Lois Long or Clara Bow could talk about their favorite products, clothes, music, and movies. By doing so, they would be endorsing products and their respective companies. Since many flappers engaged in enticing leisure activities previously limited to men; including smoking, drinking, and dancing the Black Bottom and Charleston, stories from their experiences would be very interesting for young women in New York to hear. Everything from flappers’ career ventures to their casual relationship endeavors could inspire the audience to assert their independence and choose the lifestyle they wanted. Adopting a boxy, unisex silhouette that flattened the appearance of their curves defined the flapper’s unusual style of sexualizing androgyny. The flapper’s image challenged traditional values by introducing the idea that women were fearless in their battle for equal rights, thus representing the active feminist movement of the 1920s to empower the radio show’s audience.

The flapper was the harbinger of a radical change in American culture. She was a product of social and political forces that assembled after the First World War. Modernization adjusted the American life. Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern by Joshua Zeitz analyzes the people who created the image of the flapper. This work is an incorporation of narrative, statistics, and scholarly work that provide a distinct insight on the “New Woman.” Joshua Zeitz asserts the flapper was not a dramatic change from traditional American values but reflected the “modern” decade under mass media, celebrity, and consumerism.

The story starts off with a hopelessly romantic side. It all begins by learning about a seventeen year old girl named Zelda and a First Lieutenant named Francis Scott Fitzgerald who is known to who they became to be in modern day history. Zelda can be classified as a wild child. Her summer tan gave her skin the color of a rose petal, her hair was gold, and her eyes seemed to change color with her prismatic moods. Scott Fitzgerald was an individual who spent four years at Princeton without earning his undergraduate degree. He gave little contribution to classroom discussions, and was lazy in all things but reading and writing. In this novel, Joshua Zeitz is able to educate the readers on the becoming of new women in America. Zeitz is also able to inform the readers on the evolution and growth of the liberties associated with the new American women. As one of the themes in the first section of the book, Zeitz develops a concept by discussing and analyzing the life of CoCo Chanel. She was a French

Throughout the ages women have been stricken with often male-made oppression in many forms on the long, difficult road to their eventual initiation into equal rights. Some aspects of women’s rights today were obtained by questionable means in the past. One such act of liberation by questionable means was the introduction of a class of women in the 1920s known as flappers. These flappers were the beginning of a new wave of sexually and intellectually liberated women. Women of this age wore short skirts and revealing clothing in addition to cutting their hair into bobs and smoking and drinking publicly. These women were also outspoken in many areas,

The flappers, that began flourishing during World War I, by the 1920’s had become a prominent character with their very own defining characteristics. Around the time of the WWI woman were closer than ever before to gaining women’s rights, giving women the confidence they needed to make change happen(2 2). By the time the war ended, flappers had gained an image of “slender woman in short straight dresses, long beaded necklaces, and bobbed hair, drinking gin and dancing the Charleston (1 167)”4. The flappers were the new woman of the era that were opinionated

Frederick Lewis Allen, in his famous chronicle of the 1920s Only Yesterday, contended that women’s “growing independence” had accelerated a “revolution in manners and morals” in American society (95). The 1920s did bring significant changes to the lives of American women. World War I, industrialization, suffrage, urbanization, and birth control increased women’s economic, political, and sexual freedom. However, with these advances came pressure to conform to powerful but contradictory archetypes. Women were expected to be both flapper and wife, sex object and mother. Furthermore, Hollywood and the emerging “science” of advertising increasingly tied conceptions of femininity to

We chose our topic because it had tons of factual information, interesting points, and lots of evidence. During our lifetimes, we both danced and thought a project including that type of information would really be interesting to dig into. Based on our strengths and weaknesses, we thought doing a performance would be the best and this topic really incorporated a play. This topic took place during the Roaring 20’s and thought the flappers topic about the lifestyles of women would be captivating. One of us has a family member in the dance industry that pushed us to dig deeper into dancing history. This made us want to explore origins of the flappers history.

The 1920s was a very interesting era. The era of the audacious and daring. There was no other era like this one. The 1920s had the greatest musicians and poets. For example, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Langston Hughes. The 1920s also had the best actresses and models. For example, Josephine Baker, Cecil Beaton, and Dorothy Parker. It was also the era of flappers, where young women expressed discontent with traditional social roles by adopting the appearance and behaviors of men. (The 1920s: Introduction). Music in the 1920s definitely inspired many to be bolder, and inventive. Music helped people express themselves in a frolicsome way. Fashion as well, inspired people to be more original and free-spirited, especially women. Fashion in the 1920s paved the way for women to be more untroubled and blissful. The American personality became exceedingly inventive and

In the 1920’s we see a change in the average American women’s lifestyle, as they begin to seize their freedom and enjoy their lives. As seen in the photographs in Document 3, women started to drink and smoking in public, as well as dressing differently and cutting their hair short. Before this time period smoking and drinking in public would have ruined a woman's reputation. Women took part in attending illegal bars, “speakeasies” along with men, when before it had not been socially acceptable to go to bars. In addition, women started wearing shorter skirts, pumps, and transparents silk hose which was seen as a more daring and fashionable way of dressing.

War is often followed by change; World War I is no exception. World War I is often labeled the cause for the rise of a feminine revolution-“the flapper”. Before the term “flapper” began to describe the “young independently-minded woman of the early Twenties” (Mowry 173), the definition that is most prominent today, it had a 300-year long history. The young woman of the 1920’s was new and rebellious. In her appearance and demeanor, she broke the social constructs of her society.

The 1920s was a very special time for woman. Women started standing for up for themselves and making points to men that women can do just the same as them, and that women should be equal to men and have the same rights. That’s where flappers came from. Flappers were basically woman who stood out and did what they wanted. Women's rights were changed drastically because of flappers, now women are more equal to men. Flappers had a large impact on the American culture going from woman’s right, music and their fashion.

Because The Great War had, in a sense, given them empowerment (right to vote, career opportunity), women adopted a spunky attitude that led to a daring clothing style; and were, indeed, good candidates for businesses who strived for consummators. They threw away the traditional clothes, which covered their back and legs to adopt hemlines and the boylike French style “ garconnes.’’ They wore short hair and cloche hats, which perfectly fitted the short hairstyle. People called this new species of women “flappers.” They were know for wearing heavy make up, smoking, driving, having casual sexual activities…in one word, for doing everything that was known “masculine”

The flapper’s lifestyle of partying and living in hollow extravagance stood in stark contrast to pre-World War I culture, and soldiers returning home from war found themselves without a role in the new society. In Ernest

The Roaring Twenties was a time renowned for partying, drinking, and a time without war. F. Scott Fitzgerald is just one of the many writers during this time to write about such times. Fitzgerald, however, is an author that defined this era also known as the Jazz Age. Known for novels such as The Great Gatsby, This Side of Paradise, and The Beautiful and the Damned, and many short stories, Fitzgerald is described by famousauthors.org as “one of the greatest writers American soil has produced in the 20th century. F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. He had an amazing writing career driven by an interesting personal life. His death and legacy cut his career short and we still celebrate him now.

From coast to coast people were reading the exploits of a new type of woman called flapper. Prior to World War 1 Victorian ideals still dictated the behavior of American women and girls. Frederick Lewis Allen describes the traditional role of women. Women were the guardians of morality. They were made of finer stuff than men. They were expected to act accordingly. Young girls must look forward in innocence to a romantic love match which would lead them to the altar and to living happily ever after. Until the right man came