American Flappers During The 1920's

Flappers, also known as New Women, represented the women during the Twenties, who rebelled against conventional ideas of ladylike behavior and dress. Who now can manipulate their own will. This typically feminist group raised up during the 1920s, in Britain and its ideas had spread all over the world. Once it landed in the United States, it caused a huge impact on the public, the women who were affected by it, following it as a fashion statement .Besides that, American women strengthened the idea of the flapper too, by developing and expressing new incredible characteristics. Which made American flappers special. Yet, American flappers truly demonstrated flapper's essence, by presenting the wealth, independence, and freedom that American women

had. This made the Flapper movement catch attentions in society and the world. Although the Flapper influence did bring a lot of positive perspective and outcome, there are a lot of also negative effects too. Thus, the negative impact brought by the evolution of flappers was affected women, which had a negative influence pass down to the future too.
In most cultures, women are seen as either weaker than men or controlled by men. Once, the ideas of the flapper reached the United States, women loved the idea, and the flapper look actually became a popular style. The popularity of flapper gaining its popularity fast does not only depend on a belief of independence and freedom for women because that was just not enough to cause a great influence on society. So, the factors increase its popularity of the flapper were the right timing, creative style, and the sense of attraction. First, the reason the Flappers became popular is because it appeared at the right period, right after three major events in history, World War One [chap 19, Littell], the 1919 Woman's Civil Right movement [Littell] and 1920s American golden age [chapter 23 Littell]. These three events play a huge role in the evolution of flappers. First the war caused the huge amount of male population to decline. So, fewer voices from the counter-power that the woman had to deal with when they came to power, which lead to the accomplishment of passing the 19th Amendment about women's rights.

After, the 19th Amendment was passed, women's social status evolved, and then women definitely became hungry with more authority, with the hunger became the momentum of evolution of flapper. Lastly, the flapper appeared right in the 1920s American golden age. During that period of time, the United States already made a huge amount of money from world war one, by selling goods to those European countries in wartime, and the goods were made by women workers that means women had gain some money . So, after woman able to had economic independence, new things started to happen. Moreover, the creative style of appearance bought by flapper had a reform on American woman's social appearance and became the highest fashion during 1920s [Karolina]. By making changes on the long and fully covered up dress style from the 1910s to a 1920 flapper style. During the 1920s, woman's clothing is much shorter than it was, and had more skin exposed. And there was a typical reform brought by the flapper, which stood as a symbol of being a member of the flapper that is a short haircut. This hair style can be represented as showing themselves as a new woman that was no longer following the conventional ideas and this new style was been focused by the media as

a new Fashion. Lastly, there was the attraction of have equal social status with men in the society,[US HISTORY] flappers started to try what man were doing back in the 1920s, to be able to prove their equality, because During the 1910s, only men were allowed to go out have fun, the main entertainment for men in the pass were go to the club drinking smoking and listen to jazz. During that time women’s responsibility was staying home be a good housewife, which it is what many women in the 1920s hated to end up with. So they chose to become flapper. Even though, Prohibition banned alcohol at that time, we the human always like to challenge the limits. Indeed, the law never even stopped the consumption of alcohol. Instead, it promoted the amount of alcohol that was consumed .Also drinking alcohol is an important characteristic of man, many women tried to prove their ability and equality in the club by drinking a lot of alcohol, which end up became alcoholic Therefore, the Flappers were abusing their freedom . however , once the Great Depression in the 1933 occurred the Flappers diminished.
Flappers were represented by the feminist group in the 1920s, but the influence of flappers were not limited among women, men were too. According to the novel The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald, many women attended the parties alone but people did not look strangely at those women. Actually the women are comfortable, the men in the party already acknowledged the women there, which this result should be thanking the world war. According to the article "American Women in a World at War." By Barrett, Judy, during wartime, most men were serving in the military and opportunities were opened up to the woman .So, during the wartime men were impressed by the women's ability and productive manner in the work field, there by proved to many men that women are as strong as a man. While they were working, money help gain financial independence. Like the author Fitzgerald points out, the men are respecting the power that women build up by money. Owing to the great feeling of everyone like to be respected ignorant women from different classes began to dress themselves, because flapper fashion was popular it washed the mind of people blindly wasting their time and money on it. In fact we all knew keep up with fashion is difficult because what is popular mean expensive too. So no thought there will be a great amount of cash spend. Fortunately, some woman spend many money to keep up with the fashion build their satisfaction. Unfortunately, the result of all those unwise spending was women lost their financial power and now the soldiers were back on the work filed, women worker was less needed. So, women were unable to regain them again.
Whenever a new idea surfaces, there will be misunderstanding and the wrong belief could lead to a huge mistake.

Nevertheless, flappers were able to express their power of wealth, free will and having sex with whoever they want. In fact, in most cultures, if a man had an affair with another women, he wouldn’t be bad mouthed. While women took all the blames. The best example is the character named John in the novel The Crucible. John is a married man who is having an affair with a young girl, Abigail. If the scandal is revealed, the female will be the only one to receive punishment. Therefore, women who have sex without taking responsibility was a huge issue to the Flappers. Also, because the idea about sex was a new idea, somehow people misunderstood and connected Flapper with being a prostitute or slut, what a terrible mistake. Moreover, this misunderstanding did make some women become prostitutes. According to The Americans Reconstruction to the 21st Century by, men are taking back the jobs, the work field had less need of woman workers. Therefore, if a woman is still willing to spend money, she either needs to depend on the man or go to work but she doesn't want to be in control again. As a result, the most primitive way for a poor woman to earn money is to become a prostitute. Through such result, flapper fashion made more women use sex as a tool and completely ruined the original idea of being a

flapper.
In modern period , we have discovered three most important ideas of being a flapper were having self-authority, financial independence and freedom in the behavior Those once were the ideas that women felt most proud of, but good ideas also have their negative sides because the ideas were ruined by some women and the problems passed on to the future. First, they gave up some self-authority they originally had, throughout the history women wish to have equal social status like men because back then women’s social status was low, but women didn't realized they already had a great power that no man is unable to match. Then it caused a lot of women in the future to become what we call an “iron lady”. They spent their whole lifetime in the working field, while in some women’s life period, they are having children, and children are the world's future. In fact, the mother figure had a lot of influence on most of the children's childhood. Therefore, because women are able to influence their children who are similar to god, and are able to change the destiny for human. In addition, while more women focused on their career, human resources decline. Moreover, the second thing they did was to waste the money. Originally, flappers had financial independence but, some women abuse the right because they didn't use the cash wisely. Therefore the result became broken and it caused the increasing the number of poverty which it is really damaging the economy and government. Lastly, is the freedom in behavior. The thing that women were not able to control back in the 1910s was sex. So, once some women misunderstood the purpose of the right to have sex, some stared to have promiscuity which is often appear on the internet. This uncontrollable sex caused a huge increase of sexually transmitted disease patients. Based on the two data recording from the year 1998-2006, first one is about the STD control by Paolo Piva & Rebecca Dodd. It is telling the number of the STD patients that had a huge increase over years and helped us predict the past and the future trends. There were less STD carriers and if the wrong behavior kept going on, STD will be a huge threat for human. The second is recording years from the 1990 -2009, the increase in Chlamydia carriers. Most Chlamydia carriers were females. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). There are also a large number of men got infected with STD too. That means the negative effects are influencing not only female, male too.
As a result, the flapper fashion did contributed a lot of positive stuff to women, but there were negative things passed down too. As the wrong ideas keep on passing, many horrible outcome will be waiting for the women, such as the bad reputation, life safety and losing their right. Therefore, all the women should have more self-control on their behavior and dress in order to prevent more problems.