Flappers

Some critics claimed that flappers were emulating men, seizing male power and freedom by looking like men. They were indeed like men in that they made their own choices and expressed their sexuality more freely than ever before. The flapper would have laughed at the ideal, chaste, Victorian maiden who considered a kiss tantamount to a proposal. But the flapper didn’t want to be a man. She wanted to be a woman, a New Woman, the woman of her own creation.

The word flapper came from British slang for an awkward teenage girl. The flappers, however, did not consider themselves little girls - they worked hard to be grown up and sophisticated. Along with their short skirts they wore short hair, lipstick, rouge, and powder. Some flappers even swore. Girls in their late teens or early twenties were the first to wear the short skirt as a statement that they were New Women, no longer bound by pre-war values. The old-fashioned long skirt came with an array of constricting undergarments. Corsets bound the female body into the current fashionable form, and petticoats created a barrier between the skirt and skin. Until the advent of the Twentieth Century, the female ankle and calf were hidden erotic zones. The flapper changed that. Freedom of movement was a core principle of flapper fashion. These are the kind of women that went to Gatsbys parties.

Work Cited

Mandel Sarah "Flapper skirts as Feminist symbols." FWWD magizine. 12 May.2010.