Make the World a Prettier Place: November 2010

What is a flapper exactly?

"Flapper" in the 1920s was a term applied to a "new breed" of young Western women who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms.

Flappers' behavior was considered outlandish at the time and redefined women's roles. The image of flappers were young women who went to jazz clubs at night where they danced provocatively, smoked cigarettes through long holders, and dated freely, perhaps indiscriminately. They rode bicycles, drove cars, and openly drank alcohol, a defiant act in the American period of Prohibition. Petting became more common than in the Victorian era. Petting Parties, where petting ("making out" or foreplay) was the main attraction, became popular. With time, came the development of dance styles then considered shocking, such as the Charleston, the Shimmy, the Bunny Hug, and the Black Bottom. Flappers also began working outside the home and challenging women's traditional societal roles. They advocated voting and women's rights.

They were also considered a significant challenge to traditional Victorian gender roles, devotion to plain-living and hard work, religion and more. Increasingly, women discarded old, rigid ideas about roles and embraced consumerism and personal choice, and were often described in terms of representing a "culture war" of old versus new. In this manner, flappers were an artifact of larger social changes — women were able to vote in the United States in 1920.

Despite its popularity, the flapper lifestyle and look could not survive the Wall Street Crash and the following Great Depression. The high-spirited attitude and hedonism simply could not find a place amid the economic hardships of the 1930s.
(Source: Wikipedia)