Free Essays, Term Papers, Research Papers at Anti Essays

The loosening of limits on women was one of the most important legacies of the 1920's. In both America and certain countries of Europe women were voting for the first time. They were also getting better jobs. Young women were wearing dresses and shamefully tight bathing suits that showed leg skin from knee on down. Talking about Freud and sex were signs of hip ness. While showing feminine flesh flappers also sported genderless look, cutting their hairs like boys (bobbed hair) but adding a feminine touch through roughness. Contemporary historian Preston W. Slosson drew a more controlled picture:
Thus the flapper of the 1920's stepped onto the stage of history, breezy, slangy and informal in manner; slim and boyish in form; covered with silk and fur that clung to her as close as onion skin; with carmined lips, plucked eyebrows and close-fitting helmet of hair; gay, plucky and confident… She cared little for approval or disapproval and went about her "act', whether it were a Marathon dancing contest, driving an automobile at seventy miles and hour, a Channel swim, a political campaign or a social-service settlement. Eventually she married her dancing partner, that absurdly seriously young man with plastered hair, baby-smooth chin and enormous Oxford bags, and then they settled down in a four-room kitchenette apartment to raise two children, another "younger generation' to thrust back stage among the "old fogies."
Flappers had their own minds and were living their own lives and were enjoying it. They certainly did not like tradition and morality. Black-influenced jazz music as well as dance styles fascinated white youth to the disappointment of parents. 1920 women created a new style for women across the United States.