Why Is Flappers Important In The 1920s

Beauties with Balls “The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.” (Roseanne Barr). After the 19th amendment passed in the United States, most upper-middle class women believed that the battle for gender equality was over, but a new breed of feminist emerged from the shadows to prove the suffragists that the fight had just begun. This new feminist took the form of a narrow woman with bobbed hair, heavy makeup, and an extravagant drinking problem. These revolutionary equalitarians were known as Flappers and began surfacing around the 1920s. Flappers challenged the remaining issues of a woman’s social injustice and disapproved women’s dependence of men. Flappers helped spark the feminist movement because they

Emily Spivack wrote that with the end of WWI, the returning soldiers expected to resume to a womanless workplace, but these ladies were reluctant to abandon their newly found passion in business. Women had the ability to experience just what a proper workplace entailed while men were away at war. Their position in these institutions unyieldingly remained after the war; women continued their jobs alongside their male counterparts. As stated by Dennis K. Swartz, flappers had emanated extreme impact on the workplace by gravitating towards jobs outside of their home. Flappers sought to expand themselves in America’s corporations. In doing so, these working women began to have the ability to support themselves, and, therefore, tended to rely less on men. However, these women not only defied the workplace’s principles, but also condemned society’s gender

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. Women have now been able to drink in public, and in doing so they forced the men to come to terms with the social and political change women were