Flapper Girls – Feminism and Consumer Society in the 1920s

Abstract

Flapper Girls were young women in the years after the First World War who acted explicitly as apolitical individuals. First and foremost, one associates a certain style of fashion with women during the twenties: the bob, rouge on the cheeks, powder on the knees, and short skirts. This is the typical flapper-like behavior: smoking in public, driving in cars, dancing the Charleston or the Shimmy, excessive consumption of alcohol in times of prohibition, nightly celebrations in jazz clubs and at petting parties, where men and women had premarital sexual experiences. These women’s hedonism is highly marked by consumption: consumption of mass industrial products, consumption of mass culture and mass media, consumption of urban nightlife, consumption of sexuality – 1920s consumer society in Germany as well as in the United States received a noticeable boost. The phenomenon of the Flapper and its image in the public sphere will be taken into consideration in regards to its connection to consumer culture with its various facets. In particular the question will be discussed to what extent the Flapper Girl phenomenon has feminist potential.