Flapping our dresses in 1920

 There are many cultural themes that depict women, sex, and style in the book Flapper by Joshua Zeitz. Flapper takes place during the 1920s where younger generations were pushing aside their Victorian principals and were transforming into the Jazz age. During the 1920s and the industrial boom there were many new inventions including automobiles, telephones, radio, and medicine. Many families who grew up in the countryside were moving to big cities. The strength of America was driven by vast economic power and achieving the American dream.

       

In high school most of us read the Great Gatsby, a story about a men who achieved the American dream and was living in the West Egg outside of New York City. After reading part 1of the Flapper I began noticing similarities between the two stories. Both Jay Gatsby and Scott Fitzgerald devoted their life to keeping up their celebrity profiles. The first section of the Flapper begins with introducing us to Zelda, a 17-year old, "wild child"that has a promiscuous and rebellious character. Zelda ends up becoming the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who gained fame in the early 1920s as a successful American writer.

Fitzgerald introduced us to the word "flapper" which is described as a teenage girl whose posture is "supposed to need a certain type of clothing-long, straight lines to cover her awkwardness-and stores advertised these gowns as 'flapper-dresses.'"[1] Due to Zelda's outrageous independence for her sexuality, she was dubbed the first American "Flapper" by her husband Scott. Scott's love and desire for his wife influenced the writing in his novel. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, has many underlining meaning between the relationship in the book compared to the relationship between him and Zelda. 

Before the 1920s many women dressed very conservative. The flapper changed societies outlook on women and gave women more credibility in the workforce, economy, and culture. Feminists had previously worked so hard on acquiring women’s suffrage, legal rights, income equality, and most of all, women acceptance, but they felt that “the New Woman of the 1920s was an apolitical creature interested only in romantic and sexual frivolities” [2] Women modernized America during the 1920s and redefined feminism as an act for independence which led to an upward trend in urban and industrialization.

Zeitz, Joshua. Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006. 

1. Zeitz, Flapper, 5

2. Zeitz, Flapper, 105