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Flappers of the 1920s were immature women known for their energetic liberty, embracing a lifestyle viewed by many at the time equally outrageous, immoral or downright dangerous. At present considered the commencement generation of independent American women, flappers pushed barriers in economic, political and sexual freedom for women.

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Women'due south Independence

Multiple factors—political, cultural and technological—led to the ascension of the flappers.

During World State of war I, women entered the workforce in large numbers, receiving higher wages that many working women were not inclined to give upwards during peacetime.

In August 1920, women's independence took another step forward with the passage of the 19th Subpoena, giving women the right to vote. And in the early 1920s, Margaret Sanger made strides in providing contraception to women, sparking a wave of women's rights to nascency command.

The 1920s likewise brought about Prohibition, the result of the 18th Amendment ending legal alcohol sales. Combined with an explosion of popularity for jazz music and jazz clubs, the stage was set for speakeasies, which offered illegally produced and distributed alcohol.

Henry Ford's mass production of cars brought down automobiles prices, allowing the younger generation far more mobility than in earlier eras. Many people, a number of them immature women, drove these cars into cities, which experienced a population boom.

With all these pieces in place, an unprecedented social explosion for immature women was all merely inevitable.

What Is a Flapper?

No one knows how the word flapper entered American slang, but its usage get-go appeared merely following World War I.

The archetype paradigm of a flapper is that of a stylish immature party daughter. Flappers smoked in public, drank alcohol, danced at jazz clubs and practiced sexual liberty that shocked the Victorian morality of their parents.

Flapper Dress

Flappers were famous—or infamous, depending on your viewpoint—for their rakish attire.

They donned stylish flapper dresses of shorter, calf-revealing lengths and lower necklines, though not typically form-fitting: Straight and slim was the preferred silhouette.

Flappers wore high heel shoes and threw abroad their corsets in favor of bras and lingerie. They gleefully applied rouge, lipstick, mascara and other cosmetics, and favored shorter hairstyles like the bob.

Designers similar Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli and Jean Patou ruled flapper way. Jean Patou's invention of knit swimwear and women'due south sportswear similar lawn tennis clothes inspired a freer, more relaxed silhouette, while the knitwear of Chanel and Schiaparelli brought no-nonsense lines to women'due south clothing. Madeleine Vionnet's bias-cut designs (made by cut fabric against the grain) emphasized the shape of a woman's body in a more natural way.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald found his place in American literary history with "The Peachy Gatsby" in 1925, but he had already garnered a reputation before that every bit a spokesperson for the Jazz Age.

The press at the time credited Fitzgerald equally the creator of the flapper considering of his debut novel, "This Side of Paradise," though the book didn't specifically mention flappers.

The credit stuck and Scott began to write about flapper culture in short stories for the Saturday Evening Mail service in 1920, opening up the Jazz Age lifestyle to middle-grade homes.

A collection of these stories was published that twelvemonth under the title "Flappers and Philosophers," cementing Fitzgerald as the flapper skillful for the next decade.

Zelda Fitzgerald

If Fitzgerald was considered the chronicler of flappers, his wife Zelda Fitzgerald was considered the quintessential example of ane.

A native of Montgomery, Alabama, Zelda was a stylish, free-spirited young adult female who met Fitzgerald in 1918 while he was stationed there in the war machine. She was 17 at the fourth dimension and—equally the daughter of a prominent local guess—her hedonistic escapades scandalized her family unit.

The pair was married in New York City i calendar month after "This Side of Paradise" was released and shortly embarked on a lifestyle of reckless partying and publicity-seeking in Europe and across America.

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Both publicly claimed that Zelda was Fitzgerald's inspiration for all his female characters, bringing her in as much need for her insight as he was. She was soon writing articles almost the "modern" flapper lifestyle.

Lois Long

Lois Long was another writer chronicling flapper culture in print. Using the pseudonym Lipstick, Long began writing for The New Yorker shortly after its inception.

Her work chronicled the life of a flapper and recounted her real-life adventures drinking and dancing all dark long. She typically wrote her column—kickoff named "When Nights Are Bold" and "Tables For Two," launched in 1925—straight after her nights out, typing into the wee hours.

Flappers in Advertizement

Recognizing that women now had dispensable incomes of their ain, ad courted their interests beyond household items. Soap, perfume, cosmetics, cigarettes and fashion accessories were all the subjects of ads targeting women.

Helen Lansdowne Resor was the most powerful adult female in advertising at the fourth dimension. The head of women's advert at the J. Walter Thompson Agency, she worked her way upward from secretary cheers to her keen understanding of selling to women. She was the start advertizing executive to push sex entreatment as a method of marketing to women, ofttimes focused on getting male attention.

Flapper mode regularly graced the covers of magazines like Vanity Fair and Life, drawn by artists like John Held and Gordon Conway.

Flappers on Film

Anita Loos' book "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and its follow-upward "But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes" were famous satires of the globe of flappers. The books focused on flapper Lorelei Lee and her male conquests. The beginning film version of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" was released in 1928 (another version was released in 1953, starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell).

The popularity of movies exploded during the 1920s, though the screen versions of flappers were typically less permissive than the real-world versions. The kickoff popular flapper movie was "Flaming Youth," released in 1923 and starring Colleen Moore, who was soon Hollywood's "go-to" actress for playing flappers onscreen.

Louise Brooks auditioned for a part in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" only failed. Withal, the epitome of Brooks and her precise bob has become the archetypal vision of a flapper. The Hollywood portion of her film career featured several starring flapper roles before she moved on to more serious dramas.

The 'It' Girl

Clara Bow'south nickname was "the It Girl," referring to her 1927 picture show "Information technology," which was adapted from a magazine article by Elinor Glyn. Bow was the most successful screen flapper, beloved for the unpretentious manner of her portrayals and her frank sex entreatment.

Anna May Wong broke barriers equally the kickoff Chinese-American movie star. Her prototype as a flapper off-screen was encouraged by movie studios to increase her appeal beyond the exotic roles in which they cast her.

Dancing was a crucial part of flapper culture. The Charleston and the Blackness Bottom were popular and considered more suggestive than any moves that had come up earlier. The acclaimed 1923 British play "The Dancers," which starred Tallulah Bankhead, examined the dance obsessions of ii flappers.

Criticism of Flappers

Not everyone was a fan of women's newfound sexual liberty and consumer ethos, and there was inevitably a public reaction against flappers.

Utah attempted to pass legislation on the length of women'south skirts. Virginia tried to ban any clothes that revealed also much of a woman'due south throat and Ohio tried to ban form-plumbing equipment outfits.

Women who populated beaches in bathing suits that were deemed inappropriate were escorted off the embankment past police or arrested if they refused.

Popular Washington, D.C., hostess Mrs. John B. Henderson attempted to outset a mass motility against what she considered vulgar fashions, appealing to prominent women'southward clubs and colleges for help.

Clergymen like Rabbi Stephen Southward. Wise and Baptist pastor Dr. John Roach Straton became known for their tirades against immature women's fashions.

Flappers too received criticism from women's rights activists like Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Lillian Symes, who felt flappers had gone besides far in their cover of licentiousness.

End of the Flappers

The age of the flapper came tumbling down of a sudden on October 29, 1929, with the stock market crash and the beginning of the Bully Depression. No one could beget the lifestyle whatsoever longer, and the new era of frugality fabricated the freewheeling hedonism of the Roaring Twenties seem wildly out of touch on with grim new economical realities.

Many pic-star flappers had already met their cease 2 years earlier with the advent of talking film, which was not always kind to them. The Hays Code in 1930, which severely limited sexual themes in movies, made independent women in the flapper mold almost impossible to portray onscreen.

Sources

Flapper. Joshua Zeitz.
Flappers: A Guide To An American Subculture. Kelly Boyer Sagert.
Flappers and the New American Woman. Catherine Gourley.
A Perfect Fit: Apparel, Character, and the Promise of America. Jenna Weissman Joselit.