THE FLAPPERS!
In the 1920s, some new women were born. They smoked, drank, danced, and voted. They cut their hair, wore make-up, and went to petting parties. They were giddy and took risks. They were Flappers.
While visiting my Grandmother's house back in Tampa Florida, I found an old picture of her with dark hair and these spit curls all around her face and big dark lips. I knew right then and there that Grandma had been a flapper!
I'll bet that's when she started smoking those Lucky Strikes too!
When the World War I was over, the survivors went home and the world tried to return to normalcy. Unfortunately, settling down in peacetime proved more difficult than expected. During the war, the boys had fought against both the enemy and death in far away lands; the girls had bought into the patriotic fervor and aggressively entered the workforce. During the war, both the boys and the girls of this generation had broken out of society's structure; they found it very difficult to return.
They found themselves expected to settle down into the humdrum routine of American life as if nothing had happened, to accept the moral dicta of elders who seemed to them still to be living in a Pollyanna land of rosy ideals which the war had killed for them.
Women were just as anxious as the men to avoid returning to society's rules and roles after the war. Nearly a whole generation of young men had died in the war, leaving nearly a whole generation of young women without possible suitors. Young women decided that they were not willing to waste away their young lives waiting idly for spinsterhood; they were going to enjoy life.
Authors such F. Scott Fitzgerald and artists such as John Held Jr. first used the term to the U.S., half reflecting and half creating the image and style of the flapper. Fitzgerald described the ideal flapper as "lovely, expensive, and about nineteen."
Held accentuated the flapper image by drawing young girls wearing
unbuckled galoshes that would make a "flapping" noise when walking.
Flappers had both an image and an attitude.
The hem of the skirts also started to rise in the 1920s. At first the hem only rose a few inches, but from 1925 to 1927 a flapper's skirt fell just below the knee. The short haircut was called the "bob" which was later replaced by an even shorter haircut, the "shingle" or "Eton" cut. The shingle cut was slicked down and had a curl on each side of the face that covered the woman's ears. Flappers often finished the ensemble with a felt, bell-shaped hat called a cloche.
Flappers also started wearing make-up, something that had previously been only worn by loose women. Rouge, powder, eye-liner, and lipstick became extremely popular.
(Ok now here's my personal thank you for the eye liner, I'd be lost without it!)
The flapper attitude was characterized by stark truthfulness, fast living, and sexual behavior. Flappers seemed to cling to youth as if it were to leave them at any moment. They took risks and were reckless. Smoking wasn't the most outrageous of the flapper's rebellious actions. Flappers drank alcohol. At a time when the United States had outlawed alcohol (Prohibition), young women were starting the habit early. Some even carried hip-flasks full so as to have it on hand.
The 1920's were the Jazz Age and one of the most popular past-times for flappers was dancing. Dances such as the Charleston, Black Bottom, and the Shimmy were considered "wild" by older generations. As described in the May 1920 edition of the Atlantic Monthly, flappers "trot like foxes, limp like lame ducks, one-step like cripples, and all to the barbaric yawp of strange instruments which transform the whole scene into a moving-picture of a fancy ball in bedlam." For the Younger Generation, the dances fit their fast-paced life-style.
Maybe all of this was why our Grandmother's understood us when our Mother's didn't. The Flappers paved the way for future generations of women. They dropped the corset, chopped their hair, dropped layers of clothing to increase ease of movement, wore make-up, created the concept of dating, and became a sexual person. They created what many consider the "new" or "modern" woman.
Where would us gals have been had it not been for the Flappers?!
Happy Mother's Day to all our FLAPPERS!!!
Until Next time......
