WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FLAPPER?

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 86, 12 April 1941, Page 18 (Supplement)

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FLAPPER?

By MLC.

\A7HAT was the flapper? What did she do? Why did she disappear? The flapper was the first woman within living memory to wear short skirts, to bob her hair, to smoke cigarettes. She danced till all hours to ragtime, and apparently thrived 011 noise- She drank whisky provided by her boy friends out of hip-pocket flasks. She went out without a chaperone; she was daring; she used mild swear words and a great deal of slang. She pioneered parking in motor cars; there had be.en no motor cars to park in before her time. .'-■ lie played games on Sunday. wore lip-stick like a badge of freedom. Her favourite books were supposed to be risque, and can be represented by such titles as "Flaming Youth,'' "The Sheik" and "The (irccn Hat." Her theme song was '"Everybody's Doing It." Remember it? "Doing "\\hat?—The. Turkey Trot!" The flapper was born of the suffragette movement and the Groat War. and had her hcv-dey in the years 1918-19:i!r>, and then, in England at any rate, she disappeared, making he.r iast public appearance somewhere about the time of the 192f> General Strike. In Xew Zealand, where she started late.r, she lasted longer, but was gradually ousted in popularity and attraction by imitations of Hollywood screen types as the. "It" girl and Clara Bow, the "S.A." girl and Jean Harlow, and the outdoor sports type girl. To-day the flapper as. a general type seems to have disappeared; her name has become a word in the English and

American language, which is used vaguely to describe the bright young things who are just emerging out of school a pre and are trying their unsteady wings on the sophisticated world. But the flapper as a person and a real type lias gone.

The flapper was attacked from all quarters. .Mi?. Grundy had a day out on her; in fact, she inspired some of tb.c best of Mrs. 's literarv efforts. Art letters about her in the papers became a favourite sport of retired colonels. "She smokes'. She drinks!" tlicy said. "What will happen to her children 7'' '"Has she given up the most precious thing a woman can possess for In-r so-called freedom?" ''Are short skrrts injurious to health?" '"Should sleeveless dresses bo permitted in Church?— Out-spoken Vicar issues warning to future mothers?'' '"The evil of the. parked car!" "Drinking at dances!" The snoopers went snooping along, and discovered the flapper did things they'd never dared to do, and in most cases t-he didn't come to the sticky en/1 they so hope.fully prophesied. The flapper went gaily on in spile of them—or, perhaps, to spite them. Under her rather garish surface she was really woman becoming consciously independent for the first time—the. previous war-time independence had been a

thing of war-time stimulation; thi flapper did not have that stimulation; she had to abide by her own valuation. Her smoking, drinking and swearing ware all surface things to prove that if she could do these things like a man she could also do a job like a man. She aimed at smartness rather than charm, because she was honest, and tried desperately hard not to bring the obvious weapons of sex into everyday dealing with her companions at work. She worked miracles in disproving and squashing the Victorian idea that a woman was a failure if not mairied before she was 23, or never married. She made it possible for spinsters e.ver after her to live as individuals. Because she existed, women are now permitted to be more useful and more, responsible; because she existed, the fine type of voung woman who takes her part unhesitatingly in the war struggle is able to exist; the flappc.r did more to complete the emancipation of women than any other type—not excluding the suffragette. And her disappearance? Like most of the really great, the flapper disappeared when she had done her task. Some of her characteristic* were merged into general society, and the flapper herself being accepted, put on long skirts again in the evening. There was no need for her to make an obvious struggle for independence, because she had won it. There should be a statue of the flapper along with Florence Nightingale and Pankhurst and the Pioneer Mothers. -She should be remembered with understanding and gratitude.