Flappers: Colorful Female Characters of the 1920's

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Flappers: Colorful Female Characters of the 1920's

As men left to fight in the Great War in the late 1910's, women in the U.S. and all over Europe found themselves necessary to make the homefront function, i.e. women had to fill the holes in industry and social life that the absence of men created for them. It is at this time that the flapper appears; a new kind of woman with short, bobbed hair, shorter skirts and freer clothes to match her new, freer lifestyle. It is no wonder that the vote was given to women during this time, as the idea of gender equality became a reality in its necessity.

It is a bit difficult to say where the term "flapper" came from. It was used in Britain to mean "a young girl", mostly in the sense that a young girl resembles a baby bird leaving the nest, flapping its wings and unable to really fly yet. F. Scott Fitzgerald used this term back in the States to define the new young women who had emerged after the war. John Held, Jr., a leading cartoonist of the time who drew the covers of many magazines, perpetuated the idea by drawing young women wearing floppy shoes that flapped when they walked.

A flapper was supposed to be a young woman, not yet mature in herself, but with a rather brazen attitude towards life. These new teenaged women drank, smoke, and drove cars. F. Scott Fitzgerald said a good flapper would be "lovely, expensive, and about nineteen." They were often criticized for their lack of clothing - women of earlier times wore layers upon layers of skirts that went down to their ankles, while flappers were suddenly wearing short, open dresses with a new scandalous pair of "step-ins" as their only form of underwear. They refused to wear garter belts to hold up their st...

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...de as well.

The flapper lifestyle was idealized in the lives of famous women, such as Zelda Fitzgerald, Anita Loos, and dozens of actresses both on the silver screen and the stage. It is no wonder the style spread quickly, enflaming the 1920s with a vitality and wildness previously unknown in the now urban-based society of the United States. Unfortunately, the good times couldn't last forever; in 1929 with the stock market crash, hemlines went back down with the economy, and lives of reckless abandon could no longer be lived. Even so, the flapper will always be remembered as one of the most colorful characters of the American landscape, and her style will be imitated in this country as long as there are girls who want to have fun.

Sources:

1.http://www.geocities.com/flapper_culture/

2.http://history1900s.about.com/library/weekly/aa022201a.htm

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