Flapper Girl Research Papers

1248 Words3 Pages

The 1920s denotes the existential era for young women to show their efforts towards modification in how others perceived them. Thus, the essence of the flapper girl was created. The typical flapper girl existed as a rebel, determined by specific characteristics: short haircut, increase of makeup on the cheeks, short skirts, and low-cut tops. This rebellion was the young women's way of proving to themselves and men what they were able to accomplish. (Reinsch, Ole). The undertaking of this trend was self-willed, or as Dick Hebdige refers to it, hegemonic in nature. Hebdige mentions, "Style in subculture is, then, pregnant with significance. Its transformations go 'against nature', interrupting the process of 'normalization'" (Hebdige, Dick). …show more content…

The myth of women prior to the 1920s style endured as innocent, pure, and dainty with duty to their role as house-wives. However, through myth analysis, these women denaturalized the concept of women in that era: through rebellion of their clothing and actions, they changed the norm to exist as an arbitrary construction of womanhood. Subsequently, the flapper girls used the thoughts of feminism to explain how their actions changed womanhood. Flapper girls wanted to show that feminism was evolving and that they were no longer only house-wives. They showed how their new culture would become nature. Feminism functions as the ideology behind the flapper girls and their cultural style change. The emphasis on feminism showed how the essence of the flapper girl related to seeing gender as a double-sphered system (Rupp, Leila J). This movement emulated the revolution of morals and mannerisms. This relates to the evolution of the punks in the 1970s in England. Dick Hebdige referred to the punks as a form of chaos through style. The punks wore their hair in quiff-styled cuts, wore leather jackets and vivid socks, and seemed "out of time" (Hebdige, Dick). The relation between the American flapper girl of the 1920s and the British punks of the 1970s correlate mostly through the dramatic change in …show more content…

Accessed 4 March 2018.
Freedman, Estelle B. "The New Woman: Changing Views of Women in the 1920s." The Journal of American History, vol. 61, no. 2, 1974, pp. 372-393. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/stable/1903954?sid=primo&origin=crossref&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents. Accessed 4 March 2018.
Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: the meaning of style. Routledge, 2011.
Reinsch, Ole. "Flapper Girls - Feminism and Consumer Society in the 1920s." Gender Forum, no. 40, 2012, pp. 1, Proquest, https://search-proquest-com.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/docview/1284337931?rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo. Accessed 4 March 2018.
Ross, Sara. "Screening the Modern Girl: Intermediality in the Adaptation of Flaming Youth."
Modernism/Modernity, vol. 17, no. 2, 2010, pp. 271-290, Proquest, https://search-proquest-com.ezp2.lib.umn.edu/docview/733007758?accountid=14586&rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo. Accessed 4 March 2018.
Rupp, Leila J. "Reflections on Twentieth-Century American Women's History." Reviews in American History, vol. 9, no. 2, 1981, pp. 275-284. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/stable/2701999?sid=primo&origin=crossref&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents. Accessed 4 March

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