Flapper Girls!

When anyone mentions the 1920's what comes to your mind? Would it be: prohibition? the stock market crashing? jazz music? The thing that always comes to my mind first is Flapper Girls. During the Roaring twenties, flapper girls changed the way many woman thought. They stood for individuality, freedom, rebellion. They believed choice was a God given right not a privilege. They believed they had the choice to choose their own job, sexuality, clothes, hair style, etc.

Flapper Girls are described as young woman around the age 19 who defied traditional ideas such as proper dress and behavior. They shocked society by raising their dresses, cutting off their hair, wearing makeup, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, and going dancing in night clubs.

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald has extravagant parties where people who weren't even invited came. This is an example of how during this time in the 1920's when not only flappers but many others went out to party and realized they could change the normal standards that people had of how they should live their life.

"There was dancing now on the canvas in the garden; old men pushing young girls backward in eternal graceless circles, superior couples holding each other tortuously, fashionably, and keeping in the corners- a great number of single girls dancing individualistically or relieving the orchestra for a moment of the burden of the banjo or the traps" -The Great Gatsby pg 46

"The playful Flapper here we see,

The fairest of the fair.

She's not what Grandma used to be,-

Her girlish ways may make a stir,

Her manners cause a scene,

But there is no more harm in her

Than a submarine."

"The Flapper" by Dorthy Parker