Alex Van Grouw

Frenzel
Fire
9 March 2014
Zelda Fitzgerald: Eulogy of a Flapper
The early twentieth century in America was a time of revolutionary thought and changing
social standards. At the head of this movement were the Flappers. They began their counter-
culture movement to promote open female sexuality, but also the idea that a woman is a free
person, entitled to her own decisions. Characterized by their short dresses and cropped hair,
Flappers were unique in thought and action. In Zeldas essay concerning this movement she
describes the movements death by comically calling it a eulogy. She speaks artfully of the
movements misunderstanding and the phenomenon that it began. What was once a counter-
culture movement had become popular, in fact fashionable.
Zelda Fitzgerald opens her essay with, The Flapper is deceased. Her outer
accoutrements have been bequeathed to sever hundred girls schools throughout the country, to
several thousand big-town shop girls, always imitative of the several hundred girls schools, and
to several million small-town belles always imitative of the big-town ship girls via the novelty
stores of their respective small towns. This is not only commentary on the lack of originality
but of the loss of meaning concerned with the movement. The Flappers were created in the mind
of womens rights. They began their movement by dressing in short dresses, cropping their hair,
and wearing far too much make-up simply to show that they could. They advocated for women
by doing what they wanted to, and not what society dictated was appropriate. It ruined the
purpose of Flapperdome, as women dressed more promiscuously in order to be more attractive to
men. The entire point was to do what one wanted, despite the desires of anyone else. The spread
of Flapper-like styles show that the movement was never truly understood in the first place.
Zelda also makes the argument that Flapperdome has become a game, in which each
standard much be outdone. She writes, And the new Flappers galumping along in unfastened
galoshes are striving not to do what is pleasant and what they please, but simply to outdo the
founders of the Honorable Order of Flappers: to outdo everything. Flapperdome has become a
game; it is no longer a philosophy. The movement has lost purpose because its members only
want to become more outrageous, more talked-about, more popular. The similarity between the
fate of this movement is undoubtedly similar to that of a movement that began only a few years
ago: Hipsterism. This philosophy dictates that one must not conform to societys rules but to
make ones own. This includes clothing, activities, modes of transportation and so forth.
However, ironically, the people belonging to this movement began to do things alike, and were
characterized by particular kinds of clothing or behavior, even though the entire goal was that
one be unique. In the same way that the former Flapper desired to be the most outrageous and
gossip-stirring, the hipster must be the strangest and most peculiar of all their friends. This game
defeats the purpose of either movement.
The question is: If such movements are doomed to fail, why begin them? Zelda addresses
this as well, towards the end of her essay she writes, Out with inhibitions, gleefully shouts the
Flapper, and elopes with the Arrow-collar boy that she had been thinking, for a week or two,
might make a charming breakfast companion. The marriage is annulled by the proverbial irate
parent and the Flapper comes home, none the worse for wear, to marry, years later, and live
happily afterwards. In this example, that Zelda ends her essay with, the Flapper-life is an outlet
for this young woman, in order that she get her rebellion out of the way essentially. For
women, even when they did not truly understand the Flapper philosophy, it functioned as way of
letting them know that their later decision in life to settle down is a decision they had made all
their own, that they were not forced by societal rules. Zelda describes it as back to the fireside
after an article she had read. These women would soon conform to traditional ideals, but feel
comforted that they had at one point lived freely. Movements are about choice and the
individual. Sometimes they enact the desired change, but most often they are simply an
exhibition of choice, and nothing is more powerful than human choice.