The first appearance of the word and image in the United States came from the popular 1920 Frances Marion movie, The Flapper, starring Olive Thomas.[2] Thomas had starred in a similar role in 1917, though it was not until The Flapper that the term was used. In her final movies she was seen in the flapper image.[3] Other actresses, such as Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Colleen Moore and Joan Crawford would soon build their careers on the same image, achieving great popularity.[2]
In the United States, popular contempt for Prohibition was a factor in the rise of the flapper. With legal saloons and cabarets closed, back alley speakeasies became prolific and popular. This discrepancy between the law-abiding, religion-based temperance movement and the actual ubiquitous consumption of alcohol led to widespread disdain for authority. Flapper independence may also have its origins in the Gibson girls of the 1890s. Although that pre-war look does not resemble the flapper identity, their independence and feminism may have led to the flapper wise-cracking tenacity 30 years later.[citation needed]
Writers in the United States such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Anita Loos, and illustrators such as Russell Patterson, John Held Jr., Ethel Hays and Faith Burrows popularized the flapper look and lifestyle through their works, and flappers came to be seen as attractive, reckless and independent. Among those who criticized the flapper craze was writer-critic Dorothy Parker. She penned "Flappers: A Hate Song" to poke fun at the fad. The secretary of labor denounced the "flippancy of the cigarette smoking, cocktail-drinking flapper."[4] A Harvard psychologist reported that flappers had "the lowest degree of intelligence" and constituted "a hopeless problem for educators."[4]
A related but alternative use of the word "flapper" in the late 1920s was as a media catch word that referred to adult women voters and how they might vote differently than men their age. While the term "flapper" had multiple uses, flappers as a social group were well defined from other 1920s fads.
[edit] United Kingdom
The term flapper first appears in an early Sports Illustrated magazine (not the same magazine in print today) [citation needed]. It is commonly supposed to be in reference to a young bird flapping its wings while learning to fly; it may however derive from an earlier use in northern England to mean "teenage girl" (one whose hair is not yet put up), or "prostitute".[5] The slang word flap was used for a young prostitute as far back as 1631[6]; by the late 19th century the word "flapper" was emerging as popular slang both for a very young prostitute[7] and in a more general sense of a lively mid-teenage girl[8].
The term is documented as in use in the United Kingdom as early as 1903, when novelist Desmond Coke used it in his college story of Oxford life, Sandford of Merton: "There's a stunning flapper"[9]. By 1908 newspapers as serious as The Times were using it, although with careful explanation: "A 'flapper', we may explain, is a young lady who has not yet been promoted to long frocks and the wearing of her hair 'up'"[10]. By November 1910 the word was popular enough for the author A.E.James to begin a series of stories in the London Magazine featuring the misadventures of a pretty fifteen-year-old girl and titled 'Her Majesty the Flapper'[11]. By 1912 however the London theatrical impresario John Tiller, defining the term in an interview he gave to the New York Times, described a 'flapper' as belonging to a slightly older age group, a girl who has "just come out".[12]An advert in The Times in 1914 suggests the word was still largely understood as referring to high-spirited teenagers[13] but by the 1920s in Britain the term could describe any impetuous immature woman, often including women under 30. Usage increased during World War I, perhaps due to the visible emergence of young women into the workforce to supply the place of absent men: a Times article on the problem of finding jobs for women made unemployed by the return of the male workforce is headed "The Flapper's Future"[14]. By 1918 however the word could also be used teasingly of a "pleasure-loving" older woman: a Dr. Whatley, accused of adultery with the wife of Major Sydney George Everitt, of Knowle Hall, Knowle, was asked in court why he had begun a verse to her with the words "There once was a flapper named Mary"[15].
By 1920 the term had taken on the full meaning of the flapper-generation style and attitudes. In his lecture that year on Britain's surplus of young women (caused by the loss of young men in war) Dr R. Murray-Leslie criticized "the social butterfly type...the frivolous, scantily-clad, jazzing flapper, irresponsible and undisciplined, to whom a dance, a new hat, or a man with a car, were of more importance than the fate of nations."[16]
[edit] Behavior
Flappers' behavior was unheard of at the time and redefined women's roles forever. Flappers went to jazz clubs at night where they danced provocatively, smoked cigarettes through long holders, sniffed cocaine (which was legal at the time) and dated freely. They rode bicycles and drove cars and drank alcohol openly, a defiant act in the American period of Prohibition. Petting became more common than in the Victorian era. Petting Parties, where petting ("making out" and/or foreplay) was the main attraction, became popular.
Flappers also began taking work outside the home and challenging women's traditional societal roles. They also advocated voting and women's rights. With time came the development of dance styles then considered shocking, such as the Charleston, the Shimmy, the Bunny Hug and the Black Bottom.
[edit] Slang
Flappers had their own slang, with terms like "snugglepup" (a man who frequents petting parties) and "barney-mugging" (sexy). Their dialect reflected their promiscuity and drinking habits; "I have to go see a man about a dog" often meant going to buy whiskey, and a "handcuff" or "manacle" was an engagement or wedding ring. Also reflective of their preoccupations, they had many ways to express approval, such as "That's so Jake" or "That's the bee's knees," or a more popular one, "the cat's pyjamas."
Many terms still in use in modern American English slang originated as flapper slang, such as "big cheese," meaning an important person; "to bump off," meaning to murder; and "baloney," meaning nonsense. Other terms have become definitive of the Prohibition era, such as "speakeasy," meaning a place to purchase illegal alcohol and "hooch," which means liquor.
Flappers have become the icon of modernity.
[edit] Appearance
In addition to their irreverent behavior flappers were known for their style, which largely emerged as a result of French fashions, especially those pioneered by Coco Chanel; and by the effect on dress of the rapid spread of American jazz and the popularization of dancing that accompanied it[17]. Called garçonne in French ("boy" with a feminine suffix), flapper style made them look young and boyish: short hair, flattened breasts, and straight waists accentuated it. By at least 1913 the association between slim adolescence and a certain characteristic look had already been made. A woman commenting on New York fashions that year referred to
"a thin little flapper of a girl donning a skirt in which she can hardly take a step, extinguishing all but her little white teeth with a dumpy bucket of a hat, and tripping down Fifth Avenue".[18]
At this early date it seems that the style associated with a flapper already included the boyish physique[19] and close-fitting hat, but a hobble skirt rather than one with a high hemline.
Although the appearance typically associated now with flappers - straight waists, short hair and a hemline above the knee - did not fully emerge until 1926[20], there was an early association in the public mind between unconventional appearance, outrageous behaviour and the word "flapper". A report in The Times of a 1915 Christmas entertainment for troops stationed in France described a soldier in drag burlesquing feminine flirtatiousness while wearing "short skirts, a hat of Parisian type and flapper-like hair".[21]
Despite all the scandal flappers generated, their look became fashionable in a toned-down form among even respectable older women. Most significantly, the flappers removed the corset from female fashion, raised skirt and gown hemlines and popularized short hair for women. Among the actresses most closely identified with the style were Olive Borden, Olive
