The Gibsonson Girls : My Favorite Art Of The Gibson Girls

“In any era, fashion is a reflection of the time and what is going on in the culture politically, socially and economically.”1 The 1920’s witnessed a variety of dramatic changes for women; these changes, such as shorter dresses and stronger attitudes occurred primarily after World War I in spite of the prolonged development of women 's’ rights through 1914 and 1920. With their new hair, fashion styles, and attitudes, women had started what became known as the “Flapper Era”.

H. Bertens describes female stereotypes to come under four labels “an immoral and dangerous seductress, the woman as the eternally dissatisfied shrew, the woman as cute but essentially helpless, the woman as unworldly, self-sacrificing angel and so on.” These labels were commonly found in both androtexts and gynotexts as feminist criticism’s attention drew towards female writers by giving them more prominence and esteem, yet they were found to both reject the traditional female form and “succumbed to the lure of stereotypical representations.” Christina Rossetti was one who was found to come under such scrutiny with her poems ‘Maude Clare’, ‘No, Thank You John’, and ‘In an Artist’s Studio’ to convey differing constructions of women.

In the 21st century, many women, myself included, take for granted that we can wear whatever we desire and say what we want, in public, without the fear of being thrown in jail. However, that was not always the case. While the fight for the continued advance of women’s rights rages on, women of the 19th century lived a very different life than the one, us women, lead today. The feminist agenda was just emerging on the horizon. One particular woman was preparing to do her part to further the cause of women’s rights: Sarah Willis Parker. Parker was better known by her pen name, Fanny Fern. After facing and overcoming extreme adversity, she made the decision to start writing. To understand how truly ground breaking Fanny Fern was, we need to understand that in a 1997 edition of an anthology of American satire from colonial times to present, Fern was the only woman writer from the 19th century in that text. Her satiric style and controversial subject matter was just what the oppressed needed to gain some support and give them a voice.

The life of a lady in the 19th century is painted in a romantic light. Pictured in her parlor, the lady sips tea from delicate china while writing letters with a white feathered quill. Her maid stands silently off in the background, waiting for orders to serve her mistress. What is not typically pictured, is the sadness or boredom echoed on the lady’s face. Perhaps the letter is to a dear friend, not seen in ages, pleading with the friend to visit, in hopes that the friend will fill the void in the lady’s life made from years spent in a loveless marriage; or possiblyk20 the lady isn’t writing a letter at all, but a novel or a poem, never to be read by anyone but her. Edith Warton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, are 19th Century ladies who dare to share their writing with the world. Through their works, the darker side of a woman’s life in the late 1800’s is exposed. Gender politics in the 19th dictates that a lady is dependent on her husband for her financial security and social standing; that is if she is fortunate enough to marry at all. In Edith Warton’s The House of Mirth, Lily Bart is a beautiful woman in her late 20’s, who fails to marry a wealthy man. The narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper slowly goes insane under her physician husbands misguided attempts to cure her of depression. The downfall of Lily Bart and the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper is

Before the Roaring Twenties, women were still wearing floor-length dresses with corsets, and crinolines, arms and legs were covered, hair was long. This Gibson girl look was set the standard for beauty, fashion and manner. And the Victorian attitudes toward dress and etiquette created a strict moral climate.

In the age before the Roaring Twenties, women were still repressed and followed a strict dress code. They wore long dress that came down to their toes, waists were cinched and arms and legs were covered. However, in the 1920s, new generation for women begun. Trendy young women in Western area were nicknamed the flapper. Flappers had a whole new style. They had short haircuts called bobbed hair, wore short skirts and wore heavy makeups. “The Flappers' image consisted of drastic - to some, shocking - changes in women's clothing and hair. Nearly every article of clothing was trimmed down and lightened in order to make movement easier.” (Rosenberg) Not only they had a whole new style, but they had whole new attitudes and behaviors too. Flappers drank, smoke, drove, enjoyed jazz music, and had casual sex. They were symbol of women’s freedom and liberation, as well as the symbol of change in women’s life and attitudes towards the “social norms” expected from women.

17th and 18th century American colonial life was not easy for women, they were overworked and underappreciated. Women were married young and quickly took on all the household responsibilities, including bearing children. Husbands, quite literally, owned their wives and because of this women had no control of their earnings, property, inheritance, or anything else (Portland State University, 2001). Though, despite all the hardships women had to go through, some overcame the challenges and still found a way to become strong women with remarkable talents. Two women who exemplify this are Henrietta Johnston, an amazing painter whose portraits were unadorned to the eye but were created using an exceptional type of medium for her time and Anne Bradstreet whose poetry showed the love she had for her husband and the intimate feelings of a colonial women (Academy of American Poets, n.d.; Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 2016; Poetry Foundation, 2015; Sarudy, B. W., 2013). Johnston and Bradstreet both took on the typical domestic roles but still found a way to display their talents. Though, how did these roles effect the work they created?

Women were raised to fit into gender roles, but that would not translate into a “man’s society”. The only solution was to make a hybrid role. As seen with Rosie the Riveter, “she is strong and at the same time beautiful.” (Hall, Orzada, and Lopez-Gydosh) This was a major distinction of the time- there was a mental image of elegant women, but also a hard reality that required women to abandon traditional views. While the definition of women had to change, so did their outward appearances.

Modern to his victorian, Butch to his Nelly, Utilitarian to his Aesthete”.(15) These examples are laid along illustrations of her and her father

In the first example, a painting done by Norman Rockwell, a girl is portrayed as “more kittenish than hoydenish” the girl and her appearance are described as “soft and tentative”. She is with a boy who is awkward, she touches just his hand and that is only to tell his fortune. The girl “looks into his eyes with confidence and no assumption of consequences to her boldness”. The girl described, was the first step away from “Mary Pickford” yet is still far away from “Flapper”. In the cover the next year, the boy and girl are shown again, this time already contrasting from the Mary Pickford type; the boy and girl share a closeness - “he is standing close in an attitude of embrace” where last time there seemed to be a line drawn in-between them. The girl’s appearance is beginning to change as well, “her dress is beginning to be tomboyish” she wears a sweater and a skirt opposed to a one piece dress and it is no longer soft and delicate. The girl has a “glance backward at the young man- awkward boy no longer- is more conscious of possible consequences of this exciting intimacy”. The stark differences in the looks that each girl is giving is enough to show the changing behavior of this new generation

Women have been shamed, violated, and even killed for how they look; for their bodies and faces and the clothing they choose to decorate themselves. Curley’s wife was ridiculed and labeled because of how she appeared. She was introduced with lips, eyes, and fingernails. Instead of a name, we learned who she was based on her relationship to a man. Steinbeck captured how women are viewed as objects rather than people in an artistic, yet demeaning

The Gibson Girls image was very feminine. They were tall, slender, and wore corsets to accentuate their hips and breasts. They had thin necks and wore their hair in loose curls piled on top of their head. Gibson Girls did not

Louise Brooks, a silent movie star, was an idol of the flappers, and their prototype for offending older generations and pushing the bounds of acceptable female behavior. She led an exuberant social life, hanging in a social circle that included George Gershwin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and other authors such as Benchley, Mencken, and Anita Loos. Louise Brooks epitomized the flapper culture and could be described as “flamboyant”, or “ambivalent”, yet always with an uneasy sense of pessimistic depression underneath it all.

Women of the 1920’s compared to women today are seen as very passive and were usually domestic wives whose main responsibility was to take care of the house and children. But throughout this decade, women were starting to slowly modernize and become more independent. In The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, Lady Brett Ashley is somewhat portrayed as “the admirable new woman” of the 1920’s-the woman who openly flaunts accepted conventions of the passive, dependent female role in society and emerges as a positive, inspiring, and risk-taking figure in Paris, Pamplona, and Madrid among the male expatriate artists. In the novel, we see Brett as a modern and somewhat inspiring woman through characterization and the analysis of specific moments

Another area in which women made changes was with their appearance. Women used their attire and style to show an independence, a certain freedom in which they alone had control. Starting with the “Gibson Girl”, women dressed in long, slim dresses, freeing themselves of the poufy petticoats of yore. Women started wearing shorter dresses and shorter hairstyles, leading to “Flapper Jane”. “Women started wearing “less” clothing, shorter dresses, cutting off their hair, and just being more “sensual” than normal”, (Bliven, 1925).