Why Is The Flapper Important In The 1920s

The 1920s was the birth of a cultural revolution following WWI. The parties were wild, the jazz was hot, the fads were completely off the wall- and there was a new topic: sex. Women flaunted their new freedom to vote and cut their hair, applied makeup, and tossed out dowdy fashions of the past for shorter skirts and slinkier, more form fitting attire. Young and carefree, the flapper was the greatest and most influential symbol of the age because the attitudes of many women transformed and challenged the view of what constituted proper behavior for modest ladies.
Having won the right to vote when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920, the new “emancipated” woman, the flapper, demanded to be recognized as man’s equal and began to express themselves at the polls. They also took up vices that had long been the province of men, smoking, drinking and indecent behavior. “Opposition to woman suffrage predated the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Men’s views in this patriarchal society believed that women should be excluded from holding office and voting and generally accepted that women …show more content…
The 1920s styles broke rules and showed off the assets of a newly confident American woman. Designers who represented “flapper fashion” such as Coco Chanel, designed clothes for comfort and ease in wear and stressed simplicity and comfort and revolutionized the fashion industry. Her elegantly casual designs inspired women of fashion to abandon the complicated, uncomfortable clothes and believed that “luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury”. (Britannica, 1) Flappers adopted a boyish look, bobbing their hair and abandoning corsets and often going as far as going out braless. Dresses were lighter and thinner and women began to wear silky and chic luxurious silks. (Time, 40) Flappers broke ties with restrained gender roles and explored traditionally masculine fashion