Roaring Twenties and their Flappers
“(…
)”Flapper”— the notorious character type who bobbed her hair, smoked cigarettes, drank gin, sported short skirts, and passed her evenings in steamy jazz clubs, where she danced in a shockingly immodest fashion with a revolving cast of male suitors.”- Flapper, Joshua Zeitz. The flapper, or the new woman of post-war America, was the epitome of the “roaring twenties”, an expression of a youthful era dedicated to celebrating the flashiest and liveliest entertainment that media consumption and music could offer. She wore rouge, she could drink, she could smoke, she could jive, and was surprisingly sexually active and far more independent than her mother. The “Roaring Twenties” had another common nickname, known as the Jazz Age, a period marked by a new innovation in music that shocked the conservative generation of the 19th century and invigorated the youth of the 20th in new song and dance fads, such as the Jitterbug and Charleston.
New revolutions in technology contributed to the progressive feel of the 20s, where American citizens saw radios, movies, and phonographs integrated into popular entertainment medium, and subjects of prevalent consumption. Urban culture was ultimately rising thanks to the economic advantages the U.S. gained from ww1, and their control over other foreign countries as one of the ultimate world powers, more people moving to cities, like New York and Chicago to find chic homes and richer employment. Furthermore, feminism turned a high point, as the new woman often rejected the controlling restrictions that conservative society had place on her, by becoming more sexually aware and active, and diving into hemispheres and professions that were typically thought to be male, such as journalism, sports, and driving.
