The American Flapper In The1920S:A Cultural Symbol Shaped By Social Transformation

The decade of the1920s was a special era in the American history, which witnessed a tremendous social transformation after World War I. A group of new women known as flappers emerged under the influence of culture and society. Different from the New Woman in the past, flappers were debutante girls whose values and moralities deviated far from the tradition owing to the prevalence of consumerism, materialism and hedonism in the Roaring Twenties.Women nurtured in this culture stood out with their distinctive silhouette and outlandish behaviors. Though still pursuing freedom advocated by the feminists, flappers in the1920s were apolitical new women who were only interested in romantic and sexual frivolities. Self-fulfillment and individual emancipation urged them to walk out of the "cult of domesticity" and endeavor to find a new identity in the public sphere. Many social factors had contributed to the emergence and transformation of the flappers indeed, moulding them a special cultural image. They were the product of pop culture, and they helped to form the culture in return. By playing a unique role in both the culture and the society, the flappers became both a focus of mass media and an indispensable part of historical development.