Flapper

Abstract: A celebration of the most glamorous era of the last century - the roaring twenties, proving that fashion in the jazz age went far beyond the flapper dress and the cloche hat. Published to coincide with the major Art Deco 1910-1939 exhibition at the V&A. The world of Hollywood and F. Scott Fitzgerald is conjured up by images from fashion magazines, posters and photographs, as well as pictures of stylish outfits for all occasions from the V&A's dress collection.

Abstract: The popular cross-class romance films of the 1920s were influenced by two socio-cultural developments: the ‘New Woman’, particularly in the form of the flapper, and the diffusion of the norms of disinterested love within the context of consumerism. The personas of the three female stars discussed here – Mary Pickford, Colleen Moore and Clara Bow – represented variations of the ‘New Woman’. Mary Pickford combined rebellion against, and continuity with, Victorian norms of femininity. Colleen Moore balanced a fun-loving flapper image with sexual reticence. Clara Bow represented the sexually assertive and alluring flapper. All three stars were heroines in cross-class romance films and their personas informed the variations in the plots of those films, but their personas were all accommodated to disinterested love, a norm that confirmed that the freedoms of the New Woman were confined within a class system linked to gender.

Abstract: 1 The Jazz-Age, the roaring twenties in the USA, the golden twenties (Goldene Zwanziger) in the Weimar Republic were characterized by economic prosperity, cultural blossoming and many social changes: the foundation of the Weimar Republic 1919 granted the right to vote to both men and women and hence granted the possibility of political participation to women; in the USA, women were granted suffrage in 1920. Nearly every schoolbook deals in this context with the presence and the phenomenon of the New Woman during the decade following the First World War. According to her representation in the media, the New Woman is the embodiment of cultural, social and technical progress: besides the newly gained right to political participation, women increasingly had the opportunity to find their way into employment; technical home appliances facilitated the 'modern' housewife's daily routine with the hope that she would have more leisure time and liberty. It is always that one image of the woman of the 1920s, being more self-confident, more independent and more emancipated, that is transported from then until today. These images of course are to be considered critically. In a more realistic view, women's suffrage appears not as successful as it should have been: the political groups and parties that emerged in most instances from the suffrage movement did not overcome the disjunctive lines of class and race. Therefore, it is not possible to distinguish one kind of women's politics in that era (Dumenil 99-111). Furthermore, in 1920, only one-third of the women entitled to vote actually did go voting (cf. Dumenil 107; Boyer Sagert 14). Whether this is a high or a low percentage could be disputed.2 Young women in the years after the First World War who acted explicitly as apolitical individuals are, for instance, the so-called Flapper Girls. First and foremost one associates a certain style of fashion with women during the twenties: the bob, rouge on the cheeks, powder on the knees, short skirts and 'objectively' cut clothing (Neue Sachlichkeit) (Kessemeier 32). Primarily contemporary celebrities like Olive Thomas, who acted the leading role of Genevieve King in Alan Crosland's movie The Flapper (1920), is along with other film stars like Louise Brooks or Colleen Moore not only a role model in reference to the aesthetic appearance but also to a whole lifestyle (Boyer Sagert 5). In this context it is equally necessary to mention the couple F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, who personified the spirit of hedonism of the Roaring Twenties in the public sphere like nobody else (Boyer Sagert 23-33). Especially Fitzgerald's texts like "Flappers and Philosophers" (1921) or "Bernice Bobs her Hair" (1920) are literary evidences for the obviously typical flapper-like behavior: smoking in public, driving in cars, dancing the Charleston or the Shimmy, excessive consumption of alcohol in times of prohibition, nightly celebrations in jazz clubs and at petting parties, where men and women had premarital sexual experiences [1]. These women's hedonism is highly marked by consumption: consumption of mass industrial products, consumption of mass culture and mass media, consumption of urban nightlife, consumption of sexuality - 1920s consumer society in Germany as well as in the United States received a noticeable boost. The impact of the flourishing economic circumstances on the phenomenon of the Flapper Girl can be seen in its ending when the global economic crisis began in October 1929, as well as in the political measures within the German labor market after 1933, and the reforming measures of the New Deal in the USA between 1933 and 1939 - these deep incisions in consumer culture and society put the end to the public appearance of the Flapper and to the phenomenon itself. [2] In the following, the phenomenon Flapper and its image in the public sphere will be examined in regard to its connection to consumer culture with its various facets. In particular the question will be discussed to what extent the Flapper Girl phenomenon has feminist potential. …