The fight against women’s oppression has gone through many challenges throughout the decades, one of the most iconic changes being the flapper era. Flappers are well known for embracing their new freedoms such as; drinking, smoking, dancing, being more sexually promiscuous, and not adhering to the expectations that their previous feminist mothers had recently laid just a decade earlier. As flappers gained and used these new freedoms and advancements, many of their conservative elders started to worry about the implications of their new carefree actions. To deal with the flapper's new behavior, the elders began describing flappers as a phase in life that was okay for young adults to go through , while still expecting them to settle down and become a wife and care for the home later in life.
Flappers have become an iconic symbol for women's reform, making it the perfect candidate for snapshot history. Snapshot history, or the “use of one idea or image to summarize a decade” is often used in history classes to help condense the complexities of one decade into a single image, to help students remember what a term
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Before the 1920’s, during World War 1, women were pushing social boundaries by creating large emphases on education, wage gaps, work conditions, and breaking the traditional gender roles that society puts in place . These women were encouraged to leave their housework behind and join the war efforts by taking over their husband’s jobs. During this time, many women's organizations, clubs, and unions were forming all trying to create spaces where women felt safe enough to address their experiences and issues publicly. Although these were very progressive advancements, there was a latent understanding that once the war was over women were expected to go back to their housework, and give the men their jobs
Flappers, known for their short hair, short dresses, and rebellious attitudes towards traditional gender roles, showed a new generation of women who were unafraid to challenge societal norms and expectations, paving the way for greater gender equality in the decades to come. The rise of flappers is considered a "cultural revolution" as it challenged traditional gender roles and norms, inspiring a new generation of women to break free from societal constraints. Working in the men's world during the war gave women a taste of financial independence and a desire for social change. This proves that the emergence of flappers was progressive because women were able to break away from traditional gender roles and prove that they were just as capable as men in the workforce. Their choices of fashion, such as bobbed hair and short dresses, were considered very outrageous by people who held onto traditional values.
Not only did flappers drink and dance, they also drove and rode in automobiles. This new privilege gave flappers the freedom to go and do as they pleased without their husbands or fathers permission. These new habits flappers had, including smoking, drinking, dancing, and driving, gave them an exciting, rebellious image which paved the way for many generations of women to come. (The Rise of the
Despite this, women were able to make a huge impact on America through social reforms. Many young women went against the beliefs of their parents. Prior to the Roaring Twenties, America was in a Victorian era. Women wore dresses that were floor-length, their hair was long and premarital sex was almost non-existent. During the 1920’s however, some women became what are known as “flappers”.
During 1920s, a new era of fashion came in the United States. It was the era when women first abandoned restricting fashions of the past decades and began to wear more comfortable clothes. During this time the new girl was invented - a Flapper, who wore short skirts, bobbed her hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted her disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. This is the background for the 1926 cartoon created by Will B. Johnstone. The cartoon shows a flapper pulling out words from the dictionary, that portray the qualities that flappers got rid of in 1920s, such as modesty, obedience and prudery.
Joshua Zeitz, an American author and historian writes about, the contemporary woman modernizing the new decade of the twenties. Flappers were the epitome of the twenties, the pushers against social norms, and the young rambunctious women who changed the meaning of what meant to be a woman. Zeitz includes quotes from the inventor of the flapper, F.Scott Fitzgerald “‘The flapper is growing stronger than ever; she gets wilder all the time ... She is continuously seeking for something due to increased her store of experience. She still is looking for new conventions to break -for a new thrills, for sensations to add zest to life, and she is growing more and more terrible’”, (Zeitz 7).
In the months leading up to World War Two, additional labor was needed in the United States. Men had to fight in the war, so they left their jobs unoccupied. Women were needed to work in the war front, as well as in “essential civilian” jobs--jobs that kept the home front running smoothly. Examples of these occupations are teachers, taxi drivers, child-care workers, bank tellers, restaurant workers, and police officers (Colman). Housewives were the only group of people who were not contributing to the war efforts, or in Teresa English’s words “the only untapped demographic.”
Women were now being called Flappers because of their short clothing, stylish black bobs, wearing heavy make-up, dancing, drinking, and smoking. “In 1890’s Britain, in fact,“flapper” described a very young prostitute, and after the turn of the century, it was used on both sides of the Atlantic for cheeky, prepubescent girls whose long braids, the New York Time reported, “flapped in the wind” (“The original “It Girl”, Web.b.ebscohost.com). This quote proves “Flappers” had a bad connotation, but then the word evolved across the world into showing freedom from a restricted lifestyle. “It was a form of youth rebellion, a project of liberation, and it didn’t go unnoticed.” (“How Flappers Rebelled Through Feminism And Consumerism”, bi.edu).
They also began to call themselves flappers because it symbolized the new liberated woman of the 1920s. The principal claim that “Middletown: A Study in American Culture” 1929 is making is that the
One of the biggest factors that caused the roles of women in the united States to change during the 1920’s was the work they did during World War I. While the men were serving overseas, the women stepped into the men’s jobs and made up the majority of the labor force at that time. This allowed women the chance to show that they can do some of the same jobs that men could do. After the war, the number of women in the workforce increased by twenty-five percent. This opened up more opportunities all over the country to earn their place in providing for their families. Another thing that changed for women, during the 1920’s was “flappers”.
The white slavery epidemic can be traced back to the time period; the 1920s was a period of evolution for the typical woman, where the response was the flapper; a “...tomboyish and flamboyant [female]: [with] short bobbed hair; knee-length, fringed skirts; long, draping necklaces; and rolled stockings” and also it was stated in the same article that “...few women actually fit this image, it was used widely in journalism and advertising to represent the rebelliousness of the period” (Culture in the 1920s: Loosening Social Structure). The image of the new woman, the flapper, was just as manipulated by the press as it was for white slavery. The flapper was described to be more promiscuous, and to have more sexual freedom than before, having the ability to show kees which was frowned upon before.
The image of the flapper was used in magazines and advertising and lead to the influence of mass consumer culture and media. This new image of the flapper “encouraged both the consumption of new products and new patterns of consumption and provided women with accessible routes to engage with modernity.” Since women started to gain rights such as voting and opportunity to gain jobs, women started to gain a sense of freedom and started to mix in with the new modern world they were entering in. As stated before, technology started to rise, and companies wanted to sell these new products. So, companies started to aim towards women in
In the 1920s there were bold, venturesome, dauntless young women who broke society's idea of women standards to change the whole American culture. The book, Flapper, by Joshua Zeitz discusses the effects that books, movies, and celebrities of this time, had on the average women, which caused this era of flappers. These young women known as flappers weren’t the only change that the post World War One era brought. Throughout the book, these changes are brought up from religion to morals, to other changes, and these changes are what would completely develop new social norms in America.
Since early ages, mothers have always criticized the ways their daughters acted. In the 1920s criticisms were taken a step further by the flappers, who completely revolutionized the view on females. Flappers in the 1920s had an impact on women for the future. Who they were, what they wore, and what their morals were was how their impacts changed the future for all the females. “The term "flapper" originated in the 1920s and refers to the fashion trend for unfastened rubber galoshes that "flapped" when walking, an attribution reinforced by the image of the free-wheeling flapper in popular culture.”
The statement that “the Home Front during World War II provided many social groups in American society an opportunity for advancement that they would not have otherwise had” is somewhat valid since not all social groups received such opportunities. Women are a specific example of a group that benefitted economically and socially from the war. Advertisements and propaganda encouraged women who had never entered the workforce before to “find their war job” (Doc. 2). New jobs had opened
In “The Flapper,” the poem describes what is like to be a flapper and how a flapper acted. This poem makes sure to highlight how women felt and why they wanted to be flappers. Both the novel and the poem talk about flappers and have similar themes, plots, and symbols about women during the ‘20s. Similar to the novel , the poem has a strong message about women and how they were thought of.