1920s Have you ever wondered about 1920s culture. It was very different from the 20th century. The people,laws,and jobs were different. I will be talking about Flappers Gangsters and speakeasies.
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The first thing that comes to mind when I hear of the 1920s are flappers. I picture the women with bobbed hair, shorter flowy dresses exposing skin, galoshes, and cigarettes. Not only did women begin to dress and look a certain way, they began to behave differently as well. Throughout history, women were deemed to be inferior to men, and were treated as such. Society expected women to take on the role of a homemaker.
Lloyd Armbrust reputes that the flappers abandoned the old generation’s unflattering and tight fashion with their flowing dresses with bobbed hair to display their confidence. Flappers would hang their corsets and cut their hair to illustrate how women had the ability to wear what they want and be who they please. They disapproved of the modest dresses women were expected to wear and ridded themselves of the patriarchy’s body shaming notions. Before the 1920s, women were rarely seen in bars and saloons but, as the Prohibition was implemented, Armbrust notes the flappers segregated the bars to drink freely. These women had the ability to defy what society told them and learned that being “selfless” was oppressive.
They had stated that a way that a woman’s dresses “affects her morals as an individual”. Flappers however didn’t seem to care though as to how the many viewed them. In 1922, Ellen W. Page had published an excerpt called “A Flapper's appeal to Parents.” This describes what it was like being a flapper and having the freedom to walk around proudly knowing that people are judging. “If one judges suppose I am a flapper... and other affairs at men’s colleges.”
Middle-class, white, adolescent girls embraced the symbol of the flapper and the development of change and innovation. It is important to note not all young women embraced the flapper’s rebellious movement and adhered to traditional pre-World War I morals and values. Young women who joined the flapper movement would no longer abide by pre-conceived conventional expectations
Clara Bow, Colleen Moore, and Louise Brooks, played a big part in influencing the young girls of the twenties, being that they literally played the flapper on the silver screen. After watching them in great movies like Ella Cinders, Wings, or Pandora’s Box, there wasn 't a girl out there that did not want to bob her hair, wear silk stockings, or go out and party. When you mention going out and partying, you can not do so without bringing up Lois Long, the famous reporter for “The New Yorker” hired to go to Jazz clubs at night and report about her outings in the morning. Her reports were honest and lively. During an interview a few years later she stated, “ There was a reckless atmosphere we responded to.
(Sauro 1) Flappers were typically young, urban, middle-classed women. Clara Bow was one of the women who popularized the flapper look, and acts. Clara bow also cultivated the devil-may-care attitude and fashion. Bow was referred to as the scarlet that had “it.”
While a majority of the “old-fashioned” people disagreed with the ways of flappers in this time, others saw it as a declaration of independance. “(…) the New Woman of the 1920s boldly asserted her right to dance, drink, smoke, and date—to work her own property, to live free of the strictures that governed her mother’s generation. (…) She flouted Victorian-era conventions and scandalized her parents. In many ways, she controlled her own destiny.”
Recognizable for looser moral behavior, the flapper wore revealing clothing desiring a body type focused on androgyny and cut her hair into a short style framing the face. Typically found in urban areas and practiced by “young, single women,” the flapper forcibly distorted the divisions “between working class and middle class femininity,” yet this was not a purposeful social cause such as what led to the passage of the 19th Amendment. Concerned mostly with individual actions and rebellions, the flapper stayed “oblivious to the problems” of the 1920 and was not a “political identity” at all but rather a youth movement that did not include or consider the feminists of the previous decade that pushed for female suffrage; in fact not equate their “femininity with gender equality” in American society. As the Great Depression hit, however, the behavior of men and women changed drastically. This economic downturn led to a return to traditional forms of femininity with the safety of marriage, and though criticized under the eyes of “revolutionaries,” remained the unshakeable basis for American society until the 1960s.
Many also disapproved the fact that they neglected their education and couldn’t make commitments like child-birth of marriage. Flappers started chains of young girls doing things such as smoking and drinking at young ages(). Without the flappers this may of never
The 1920s was a golden age for the United States, as the economy was rising. When jazz was played everywhere you went, and flappers were in style. It was hard to think that a decade later the economy and lives of the American people would change drastically. Due to such changing times so did culture, inventions, and economics. These include; women empowerment, the inventions of radios and automobiles, and the creation of commericialism.
The 1920s was a time for women to grow. To begin with, the nineteenth amendment was ratified, which made women feel “emancipated” to be able to have a political voice (United States). Another thing that changed in women was their willingness to work. During World War I, many women had to work in the workforce to help to limit the shortage of jobs but would not quit after the war due to the fact that they enjoyed their independence socially and economically (United States). Lastly, a largely popular idea of the flapper was created.
In reality, most young women in the 1920s did none of these things (though many did adopt a fashionable flapper wardrobe), but even those women who were not flappers gained some unprecedented freedoms. They did what they
Flappers were women in the 1920’s who were young, and went against social standards.
