Looking At Flappers

The archetype of the brash young Flapper woman hovers around our consciousnesses. Some of us remember a delightfully out-of-place Julie Andrews in the fluffy film, Thoroughly Modern Millie. Our post-1970s feminism doesn’t allow us to take in the indignation that the flapper of the 1920s provoked. She smoked cigarettes, drank whisky, drove cars, and most unnerving of all – wore short skirts! Yet even that last fact was less shocking than it sounds. 1920s hemlines went up and down, staying mostly around the mid calf. They reached their highest point in 1926, and that was just below the knee.

A boyish figure worked best for the flapper style. Bobbed hair, dropped waistlines that rested on the hips, strapped and chunky heels, a string of pearls – you were in full mode. The Art Deco makers of figurines took up this body type with a vengeance. Many a slim Diana and Atalanta, straining for the race, can be found poised in ceramic and bronze. My grandfather Louis, who worked for the Thomas Edison Company, had one of these lithe figurines on his living room cocktail table, She wore a grass skirt and a string of pearls that failed to successfully cover her petite bosom. I didn’t realize until I was much older that the model for this outré (to a little girl) design was Josephine Baker.

F. Scott Fitzgerald provides the best portrait of the woman behind the flapper. His short stories, Flappers and Philosophers, tell us much about the sensitivities of men and women in the 1920s and 30s.