Flapper

Flappers were a subculture of young Western women prominent after the First World War and through the 1920s who wore knee-length skirts (considered short during that period), bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for prevailing codes of decent behavior. Flappers have been seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes in public, driving automobiles, treating sex in a casual manner, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms. As automobiles became more available, flappers gained freedom of movement and privacy.

Flappers are icons of the Roaring Twenties, a period of postwar social and political turbulence and increased transatlantic cultural exchange, as well as of the export of American jazz culture to Europe. More conservative people, who belonged mostly to older generations, reacted with claims that the flappers' dresses were "near nakedness" and that flappers were "flippant", "reckless", and unintelligent.

While primarily associated with the United States, this "modern girl" archetype was a worldwide phenomenon that had other names depending on the country, such as joven moderna in Argentina, garçonne in France, and moga in Japan, although the English term "flapper" was the most widespread internationally.

Etymology

The slang term "flapper" may derive from an earlier use in northern England to mean "teenage girl", referring to one whose hair is not yet worn up and whose plaited pony tail "flaps" on her back, or from an older word meaning "prostitute". The slang word "flap" was used for a young prostitute as early as 1631. By the 1890s, the word "flapper" was used in some localities as slang both for a very young prostitute, and, in a more general and less derogatory sense, of any lively mid-teenage girl.

The standard non-slang usage appeared in print as early as 1903 in England and 1904 in the United States, when the novelist Desmond Coke used it in his college story of Oxford life, Sandford of Merton: "There's a stunning flapper".