As one 1925 critic of flappers put it, "Girls aren't so modest nowadays, they dress differently."
There's wonderful literature of the time that illustrates just how strong criticism of these young women was, such as a picture circulated by the YWCA as early as 1921 in an "education campaign against certain modern tendencies" which illustrated the "proper and improper way to dress." In it, one girl is shown in a longer gown, no obvious make up, standing straight. Her flapper counterpart "improperly" dressed, is wearing a shorter dress, makeup, and has the classic and much caricatured flapper poise - shoulders slouched, hips thrust forward with her hands on them.
Feminists of the time had their own things to say about what they saw as the flapper mentality. As Lillian Symes said, her generation of feminists had as little in common with the 19th century unpowdered, flat-heeled pioneer sufragette as it had with "the post-war, spike-heeled, over-rouged flapper of to-day. We grew up before the post-war disillusionment engulfed the youth of the land and created futilitarian literature, gin parties, and jazz babies" and was among those critical of the supposed disengagement of the flappers with political discourse. Some feminists, such as Carrie Chapman Catt, suggested that those who defended flapper dress as reflective of a trend allowing more freedom of movement, and those who criticised it as immodest, were both missing the point - "pro and con supporters have overlooked the fundamental fact that women do not wear short skirts or bobbed hair by their own election...but in obedience to the dictum of fashion."
As an aside, I tend to disagree that disengagement with political discourse typifies the behaviour of all flappers - issues of 1922's "The Flapper" magazine, for example, do discuss political issues of the day and even profile youth representatives engaged in political discussion.
The flapper trend is interesting in many respects - it was both rebellious but also conformist. Some parents at the time related how their daughters pressured them to buy flapper-wear because all their school friends were wearing those clothes. Suddenly the supposedly nice, sensible clothes their mothers provided for them weren't good enough. This is hardly unique to the 1920s or to today.
Some of the trends - hair bobbing, dress styles and smoking in particular - were certainly startling and different. But the popularity of certain elements of flapper culture was also in part created and/or promoted by clever marketing. In the late 1920s, public relations consultant Edward Bernays was hired by American Tobacco to combat the negative image of women smoking and to popularise it among women. He commisioned a psychoanalyst to prepare a report on why women smoked, concluding "Cigarettes, which are equated with men, become torches of freedom." The result? Bernays had ten young women with cigarettes at the 1929 Easter parade on Fifth Avenue. It was hailed in some sections of the media as a "bold protest against women's inequality." In fact, it was a marketing ploy.
Coco Chanel popularised mass produced fashion - her little black dress was the Ford of fashion. Even those who could not afford to buy an original could buy a very good knockoff, all the way through to mail order catalogues, which Chanel - unlike other couturiers who fought copyright infringement on their designs - did little to discourage.
Paris isn't typical of every flapper of the 1920s, but she is certainly a recognisable flapper type. And the very things she is criticised for - a lack of style (or rather a lack of taste in style), vulgarity, vacuousness, concern only with having a good time - were all levelled at flappers in their day. Zelda Fitzgerald wrote an interesting article for Metropolitan Magazine entitled "Eulogy on the Flapper" in which she celebrates some of the very characteristics that enraged critics, including supposed moral debauchery. She even suggested that "fully airing the desire for unadulterated gaiety, for romances that she knows will not last" meant that a liberated young woman might even find herself eventually "more inclined to favor the 'back to the fireside' movement" than if she repressed these impulses."
The wonderful Clara Bow bucked the popular trend of the ideal 1920s figure - which was indeed very slim and a la garconne. Obviously not all women conformed to this ideal - my own grandmother (first in her small country town to get her hair bobbed) was never going to be anything else other than curvey. But most Hollywood stars had strict weight restrictions in their contracts - they could be fired if they gained so much as five pounds. Clara suffered terribly from criticism over her weight. Even Colleen Moore, who we tend to think of a slim and boyish, had the weight clause in her contract.
Women in the 1920s often went on very low calorie diets, and it was suggested that the result was a lack of lustre to their hair and complexion. And as for celebrity (and other) behaviour...well, take Lois Long. She said that "If you could make it to the ladies' room before throwing up, you were thought to be 'good at holding your liquor.'" Two dollars was the customary rate to give the cab driver if you threw up in his cab. (Again, this is not the whole picture - as most of us here would know, liquor consumption actually went down during the 20s among the general population as a result of prohibition...I wouldn't suggest that every flapper was being sick in the back of a cab, but it certainly was happening, particularly in certain social sets).
There's wonderful literature of the time that illustrates just how strong criticism of these young women was, such as a picture circulated by the YWCA as early as 1921 in an "education campaign against certain modern tendencies" which illustrated the "proper and improper way to dress." In it, one girl is shown in a longer gown, no obvious make up, standing straight. Her flapper counterpart "improperly" dressed, is wearing a shorter dress, makeup, and has the classic and much caricatured flapper poise - shoulders slouched, hips thrust forward with her hands on them.
Feminists of the time had their own things to say about what they saw as the flapper mentality. As Lillian Symes said, her generation of feminists had as little in common with the 19th century unpowdered, flat-heeled pioneer sufragette as it had with "the post-war, spike-heeled, over-rouged flapper of to-day. We grew up before the post-war disillusionment engulfed the youth of the land and created futilitarian literature, gin parties, and jazz babies" and was among those critical of the supposed disengagement of the flappers with political discourse. Some feminists, such as Carrie Chapman Catt, suggested that those who defended flapper dress as reflective of a trend allowing more freedom of movement, and those who criticised it as immodest, were both missing the point - "pro and con supporters have overlooked the fundamental fact that women do not wear short skirts or bobbed hair by their own election...but in obedience to the dictum of fashion."
As an aside, I tend to disagree that disengagement with political discourse typifies the behaviour of all flappers - issues of 1922's "The Flapper" magazine, for example, do discuss political issues of the day and even profile youth representatives engaged in political discussion.
The flapper trend is interesting in many respects - it was both rebellious but also conformist. Some parents at the time related how their daughters pressured them to buy flapper-wear because all their school friends were wearing those clothes. Suddenly the supposedly nice, sensible clothes their mothers provided for them weren't good enough. This is hardly unique to the 1920s or to today.
Some of the trends - hair bobbing, dress styles and smoking in particular - were certainly startling and different. But the popularity of certain elements of flapper culture was also in part created and/or promoted by clever marketing. In the late 1920s, public relations consultant Edward Bernays was hired by American Tobacco to combat the negative image of women smoking and to popularise it among women. He commisioned a psychoanalyst to prepare a report on why women smoked, concluding "Cigarettes, which are equated with men, become torches of freedom." The result? Bernays had ten young women with cigarettes at the 1929 Easter parade on Fifth Avenue. It was hailed in some sections of the media as a "bold protest against women's inequality." In fact, it was a marketing ploy.
Coco Chanel popularised mass produced fashion - her little black dress was the Ford of fashion. Even those who could not afford to buy an original could buy a very good knockoff, all the way through to mail order catalogues, which Chanel - unlike other couturiers who fought copyright infringement on their designs - did little to discourage.
Paris isn't typical of every flapper of the 1920s, but she is certainly a recognisable flapper type. And the very things she is criticised for - a lack of style (or rather a lack of taste in style), vulgarity, vacuousness, concern only with having a good time - were all levelled at flappers in their day. Zelda Fitzgerald wrote an interesting article for Metropolitan Magazine entitled "Eulogy on the Flapper" in which she celebrates some of the very characteristics that enraged critics, including supposed moral debauchery. She even suggested that "fully airing the desire for unadulterated gaiety, for romances that she knows will not last" meant that a liberated young woman might even find herself eventually "more inclined to favor the 'back to the fireside' movement" than if she repressed these impulses."
The wonderful Clara Bow bucked the popular trend of the ideal 1920s figure - which was indeed very slim and a la garconne. Obviously not all women conformed to this ideal - my own grandmother (first in her small country town to get her hair bobbed) was never going to be anything else other than curvey. But most Hollywood stars had strict weight restrictions in their contracts - they could be fired if they gained so much as five pounds. Clara suffered terribly from criticism over her weight. Even Colleen Moore, who we tend to think of a slim and boyish, had the weight clause in her contract.
Women in the 1920s often went on very low calorie diets, and it was suggested that the result was a lack of lustre to their hair and complexion. And as for celebrity (and other) behaviour...well, take Lois Long. She said that "If you could make it to the ladies' room before throwing up, you were thought to be 'good at holding your liquor.'" Two dollars was the customary rate to give the cab driver if you threw up in his cab. (Again, this is not the whole picture - as most of us here would know, liquor consumption actually went down during the 20s among the general population as a result of prohibition...I wouldn't suggest that every flapper was being sick in the back of a cab, but it certainly was happening, particularly in certain social sets).
:eusa_doh: Maybe PH will take her in. 
