Flappers in the 1920s

Origins

The ecstatic, heady atmosphere that marked the end of the Great War ran headlong into Prohibition in the United States, creating an atmosphere where people wanted to party but couldn't without breaking the law --- an instability that quickly produced a culture war between the older, more demure generation and a new breed of youth willing to challenge its authority. Flappers embodied this newfound love of pleasure, jazz music, alcohol and independence. Women had begun embracing the overall aesthetic in the late 1910s, but the style didn't have a word until the 1920 film "The Flapper," starring Olive Thomas, immortalized the term.

Once the pleasure-seeking flappers were willing to break the common social boundaries regarding drinking, there was nothing stopping them from challenging other social restrictions on how women were "supposed" to act. Flappers attended clubs, drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes and danced with moves that would shock a more demure generation --- but it wasn't all just hedonism. Women in the 1920s began rejecting the notion that they were subservient or unequal to men: they began to ride bicycles and drive cars, and they became increasingly sexually liberated. Margaret Sanger, a prominent feminist of the early 20th century, was instrumental in widening access to contraceptives and removing the social stigma of birth control methods.

The flapper aesthetic, of course, is now one of the most enduring traits of the Roaring Twenties. Flappers cast off traditional images of femininity like the corset in favor of straight, tight dresses that flattened the curves of their chest, and they preferred short, bobbed haircuts that, for the time, looked positively boyish. Flappers also pushed the limits of what was socially acceptable --- they began wearing makeup in greater quantities, and their clothes showed a provocative amount of skin --- including bare arms and even much of the leg; flapper dresses were calf-length or, in many cases, higher.

Aesthetically, flappers are largely remembered today as a style reference for the Jazz Age. Their legacy, though, is more complex. Flappers were among the first women to embrace the notion of their own liberation; once the floodgates were open the old order was permanently abolished. Women began pursuing economic independence, embracing radical, free-thinking social ideas and making use of their right to vote, enshrined in the 19th Amendment, which was ratified in 1920. Today, fewer people smoke, alcohol can be purchased legally, and nobody thinks twice about a short haircut --- but the flapper lives on as testimony to the inherent equality of the sexes.