AMERICAN HISTORY FOR AUSTRALASIAN SCHOOLS

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FLAPPERS: Overview | Historiography | Document List | Additional Sources
RUSSELL L. JOHNSON (UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO)

Document List

Fashion

 

John F. Carter, “These Wild Young People, By One of Them,” Atlantic Monthly (1920).
http://eagle.clarion.edu/~faculty/tpfannestiel/carter.html
An introduction to youth culture generally, Carter blames the failings of the older generation for the seeming wildness of the younger.

Dorothy Parker, “The Flapper” (1922).
http://www.dorothyparker.com/lost07.html
Poet Parker, once described as “a John Held flapper with brains,” emphasizes the harmlessness of flapper fun.

Ellen Welles Page, “A Flapper’s Appeal to Parents,” The Outlook [magazine] (1922).
http://faculty.pittstate.edu/~knichols/flapperappeal.html[includes accompanying music]
Page describes various degrees of flapper-ism, suggesting that all women can be flappers; she further notes that being a flapper is “hard work” and wishes the public would condemn less and understand more.

Bruce Bliven, “Flapper Jane,” The New Republic (1925).
http://www.geocities.com/flapper_culture/jane.html
Bliven offers a tongue-in-cheek, though generally accepting, assessment of flapper fashions and the morality that goes along with them.

Anne Shaw Faulkner, “Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?” Ladies Home Journal (1921).
http://faculty.pittstate.edu/~knichols/syncopate.html [includes accompanying music]
The association of jazz music with African American culture causes concerns about the future of the nation’s youth.

Eleanor Roosevelt, “Women Must Learn to Play the Game as Men Do,” Red Book [magazine] (1928).
http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/documents/articles/womenmustlearn.html
Roosevelt, wife of (future) President Franklin D. Roosevelt, argues that although women have voted for about ten years, they have not yet attained political power.

Elizabeth Goldbeck, “The Real Clara Bow: She Is a Girl You Have Never Seen Before,” Motion Picture [magazine] (1930).
http://members.tripod.com/~clarbow/realclarabow.html
Clara Bow comments on aspects of her career, including her status as the “quintessential” flapper and her disillusionment with talking pictures.

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