THE FLAPPER
by Dorothy Parker
The Playful flapper here we see,
The fairest of the fair.
She's not what Grandma used to be, --
You might say, au contraire.
Her girlish ways may make a stir,
Her manners cause a scene,
But there is no more harm in her
Than in a submarine.
She nightly knocks for many a goal
The usual dancing men.
Her speed is great, but her control
Is something else again.
All spotlights focus on her pranks.
All tongues her prowess herald.
For which she well may render thanks
To God and Scott Fitzgerald.
Her golden rule is plain enough -
Just get them young and treat themrough.
In 1920s American culture, the term flapper referred to a different type of young women; rebellious ladies with bobbed hair, short skirts and heavy makeup made that a big splash in the time’s conservative culture. They embodied everything that was cool about life in the roaring ’20s. It was their worship of new-age jazz music; involvement in drinking, casual sex, smoking, and driving; and breaking of normal social and sexual ideas that made them widely controversial figures.
Flappers were commonly seen at jazz clubs, the night clubs of the 1920s, where they danced provocatively, made out with strangers and snorted cocaine (a legal, yet still looked-down-upon practice of the time). This can be loosely compared London’s mod lifestyle of the 1960s.
It was the silent film, The Flapper, which starred Olive Thomas that made flappers a popular part of pop culture. The ideals that they embodied were captured by artists of the time, such as Russell Patterson, Ethel Hays, Faith Burrows and many more. They portrayed flappers as independent, dangerous, exciting women, worthy of emulating. However, there was not all praise for these edgy women.
Supporters of the temperance movement resented the flappers’ defiance toward Prohibition and popularization of speakeasies (establishments that illegally sold liquor). Dorothy Parker (see poem below) was an adamant critic of the flapper lifestyle, citing their reckless behavior as a societal ill.
The free and easy flapper lifestyle lasted throughout the ’20s, but ended with the Wall Street Crash and impending Great Depression. But their legacy did not totally die out with their fashions, their autonomy was a model for all modern women to make their own way in America, forging outside of the home for occupations and seeking greater feministic advances.
Flappers were commonly seen at jazz clubs, the night clubs of the 1920s, where they danced provocatively, made out with strangers and snorted cocaine (a legal, yet still looked-down-upon practice of the time). This can be loosely compared London’s mod lifestyle of the 1960s.
It was the silent film, The Flapper, which starred Olive Thomas that made flappers a popular part of pop culture. The ideals that they embodied were captured by artists of the time, such as Russell Patterson, Ethel Hays, Faith Burrows and many more. They portrayed flappers as independent, dangerous, exciting women, worthy of emulating. However, there was not all praise for these edgy women.
Supporters of the temperance movement resented the flappers’ defiance toward Prohibition and popularization of speakeasies (establishments that illegally sold liquor). Dorothy Parker (see poem below) was an adamant critic of the flapper lifestyle, citing their reckless behavior as a societal ill.
The free and easy flapper lifestyle lasted throughout the ’20s, but ended with the Wall Street Crash and impending Great Depression. But their legacy did not totally die out with their fashions, their autonomy was a model for all modern women to make their own way in America, forging outside of the home for occupations and seeking greater feministic advances.
1 comment:
well, thanks for giving good historical story of Flapper.In 1920s American culture, the term flapper referred to a different type of young women, if you want know more just go trough this story.
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