Life of the Flappers

FLAPPERS

were northern, urban, single, young, middle-class women. Many held steady jobs in

the changing American economy. The clerking jobs that blossomed in the Gilded Age were
more numerous than ever. Increasing phone usage required more and more operators. The
consumer-oriented economy of the 1920s saw a burgeoning number of department stores.
Women were needed on the sales floor to relate to the most precious customers other
women. But the flapper was not all work and no play.
By night, flappers engaged in the active city nightlife. They frequented jazz clubs and
vaudeville shows. Speakeasies were a common destination, as the new woman of the twenties
adopted the same carefree attitude toward prohibition as her male counterpart. Ironically,
more young women consumed alcohol in the decade it was illegal than ever before. Smoking,
another activity previously reserved for men, became popular among flappers. With the
political field leveled by the Nineteenth Amendment, women sought to eliminate social double
standards. Consequently, the flapper was less hesitant to experiment sexually than previous
generations.

SIGMUND FREUD's

declaration that the libido was one of the most natural of human

needs seemed to give the green light to explore.

The Flapper Look

The flapper had an unmistakable look. The long locks of Victorian women lay on the floors of
beauty parlors as young women cut their hair to shoulder length. Hemlines of dresses rose
dramatically to the knee. The cosmetics industry flowered as women used make-up in large
numbers. Flappers bound their chests and wore high heels.

CLARA BOW,

Hollywood's "It" Girl,

captured the flapper image for the nation to see.

Many women celebrated the age of the flapper as a female declaration of independence.
Experimentation with new looks, jobs, and lifestyles seemed liberating compared with the
socially silenced woman in the Victorian Age. The flappers chose activities to please
themselves, not a father or husband. But critics were quick to elucidate the shortcomings of
flapperism. The political agenda embraced by the previous generation was largely ignored until
the feminist revival of the 1960s. Many wondered if flappers were expressing themselves or
acting like men. Smoking, drinking, and sexual experimentation were characteristic of the
modern young woman. Short hair and bound chests added to the effect. One thing was
certain: Despite the potential political and social gains or losses, the flappers of the 1920s
sure managed to have a good time.

Source: UShistory.org

The Harlem Renaissance was the name given to the cultural,

social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem between the
end of World War I and the middle of the 1930s. During this period
Harlem was a cultural center, drawing black writers, artists, musicians,
photographers, poets, and scholars. Many had come from the South,
fleeing its oppressive caste system in order to find a place where they
could freely express their talents. Among those artists whose works
achieved recognition were Langston Hughes and Claude McKay,
Countee Cullen and Arna BontempsZora Neale Hurston and Jean
Toomer, During this period Harlem was the Mecca to which black
writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars
traveled. Walter White and James Weldon Johnson. W.E.B. Du Bois
encouraged talented artists to leave the South. Du Bois, then the
editor of THE CRISIS magazine, the journal of the NAACP, was at the
height of his fame and influence in the black community. THE CRISIS
published the poems, stories, and visual works of many artists of the
period.
The Renaissance was more than a literary movement: It involved
racial pride, fueled in part by the militancy of the "New Negro"
demanding civil and political rights. The Renaissance incorporated jazz
and the blues, attracting whites to Harlem speakeasies, where
interracial couples danced. But the Renaissance had little impact on
breaking down the rigid barriers of Jim Crow that separated the races.

While it may have contributed to a certain relaxation of racial attitudes

among young whites, perhaps its greatest impact was to reinforce race
pride among blacks.
-- Richard Wormser
Source: PBS.org

Post World War I America

World War I, or the Great War, changed American attitudes in ways that weren't
anticipated. After having witnessed death and destruction on an unparalleled
scale, many young Americans felt a sense of shock at what was perceived as
pointless deaths in a war of automatic weaponry and barbaric practices - a war
that took place across an ocean. This country that they once knew, a safe
childhood playground solidly constructed of patriotism, faith, and morality prewar, had fallen. What was left was a population of young who felt aimless and
scattered, without the kind of direction that led to a purposeful life, and with a
whole lot of excessive behavior.
These sentiments pervaded many cultural aspects of change in the 1920s,
including literature. Writers felt that the old norms were no longer relevant, the
old ways of writing no longer relatable. They criticized what the country had
become after losing a sense of hope in the war, and how its people, among other
things, felt lost. Making sense of things, for them, was a frustrating exercise.

The Lost Generation

The term the Lost Generation was introduced by Gertrude Stein; as the story
goes, Stein's auto mechanic was upset when his young employee did
unsatisfactory work on her car. The mechanic reasoned that the young were all a
lost generation, difficult to prepare for work or focus.
Ernest Hemingway, a friend of Gertrude Stein, made it a popular concept when
he included it as an epigraph in his novel The Sun Also Rises. The Lost
Generation, therefore, really referred to that group of men and women who
came of age during World War I and who felt disillusioned in this unfamiliar postwar world.
As it relates to literature, the Lost Generation was a group of American writers,
most of whom emigrated to Europe and worked there from the end of World War I
until the Great Depression. So, America was filled with cynical people who were
facing less than certain future, but why move across the ocean just to write?
Well, many of these writers felt that their home and life could never be repaired,
and that the United States that they knew was gone completely.
A bohemian lifestyle of travel among intellectuals felt far more appealing than
remaining in a place where virtuous behavior no longer existed, faith in religion
was broken, and a connection to morality was questionable at best. So, the
expatriate writers living in Europe wrote about the trials and tribulations of this
Lost Generation, while, interestingly enough, being a part of it themselves.

Representative Writers
The most famous writers of the Lost Generation were Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott
Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Gertrude Stein, and T.S. Eliot. There are writers who,

like Sherwood Anderson, are considered a part of the Lost Generation of writers,
but who are either less recognizable writers or weren't as closely tied into the
expatriate community in Europe as the others. In order to get a glimpse into what
categorized each as a member of this Lost Generation, we will take a closer look
at a few of them now.

The emergence of a mass consumer culture during the 1920s

convinced a nation deeply divided by race, class, ethnicity, and gender
that it shared a common identity. Changes in communication and
entertainment were for the first time allowing millions of Americans to
share identical experiences: They watched the same newsreels and
films, listened to the same radio broadcasts, and read similar style
newspapers. The new consumer culture created national heroes that
all Americans could celebrate.
Movies emerged during the decade as the most popular form of public
entertainment. Moviegoers in small towns and big cities flocked to see
stars such as Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Clara Bow, and Joan
Crawford.1Perhaps Hollywoods most famous silent-screen actor was
Rudolph, an Italian gardener from Long Island, New York, who became
the sex symbol of the decade after he abducted the swooning damsel
in The Sheik.
Movies were not the only popular form of entertainment shaping a
national culture. The growth and influence of radio were equally
impressive. Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse station KDKA provided the
nations first public radiobroadcast when it reported the presidential
election of 1920. By 1926, two radio giants began consolidating
stations into nationwide networksthe National Broadcasting Company
(NBC) and Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). Network radio created

a new phenomenon: the shared national experience. Millions of

Americans, in big cities, small towns, and isolated farms, listened
to The Maxwell House Hour and The General Motors Family.