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# 2025-05-08 - The Uninhibited Flapper by Helen Bullitt Lowry | |
Helen Bullitt Lowry Watching Puritanism Set The Flapper Free | |
Recently i read a Smithsonian Magazine article about flappers that | |
caught my imagination because it described them as avid readers. | |
This drove a wedge into my mental map of flapperdom, leading me to | |
believe that there was more to it than the foxtrot. | |
Flappers, Flippers, Masculine Women and Feminine Men | |
Then, i stumbled on this article, which gives social commentary, | |
analyzing flapperdom and its puritanical context. One insight was | |
that puritanical culture depends on a double life, or in other words, | |
dishonesty. Flappers favored direct communication and honesty, which | |
requires more integrity. | |
Without further ado, here is the full text of the article: | |
Two generations ago the girl was "damned." One generation ago she was | |
"ruined." Now, according to the best authorities and her own | |
valuation, she has just played out of luck. | |
So that for the reformers and prohibitionists, the censors and the | |
woman's club resolutionists! Their bi-product is Miss Twentieth | |
Century Unlimited, the one uninhibited creature in a Volsteaded | |
civilisation. Controls--of liquor and of birth--have given us The | |
Flapper. The official reformers, reinforcing the sagging inhibitions | |
and corsets of the nineteenth century, were just the final impetus | |
needed to drive her out into the open. | |
The flapper is released from the strangle hold that is throttling the | |
rest of us. If somebody makes a law for her, she promptly and | |
blithely breaks it, the pocket flask for the moment being the outward | |
and visible sign of the spirit--and spirits--of her wide-flung | |
rebellion. It is the milepost between the time that was and the time | |
that is, that flask, and to it we owe the single standard of drinking. | |
A half generation ago the sub-debs did not indulge in anything more | |
relaxing than coca cola. And even first and second year debbies did | |
their drinking from glasses issued by the hostess, not in triplicate. | |
If a young man of the period imported a flask from the outside, that | |
young man was promptly dropped from polite society, no matter how | |
stringent was the shortage of dancing beaux. [They called a flask a | |
"bottle of whiskey" in those days.] | |
Wild oats were reserved for the boys at college. If you were of Eve's | |
sheltered sex, you really had to become a member of the Fast Young | |
Married Crowd before you could get a look in. That Fast Young Married | |
Crowd was the first to come out of the biological fastnesses of the | |
Mid-Victorian era into the cocktails and jazz of our Mid-Victrolian | |
period. | |
Moral: You had to keep yourself the kind of a girl you'd been told a | |
man wanted to marry, if you ever wanted to join in a cocktail party | |
and slide down the banisters uninhibited--as rumor had it the Fast | |
Young Married Crowd was doing on its orgies. Over the border of | |
matrimony lay the mysteries of the gay wild life. | |
In that era before our morals were legislated, being "that kind of a | |
girl" was a trying responsibility. There was an approved technique | |
that every wise virgin had to master. It consisted of letting each | |
man, on whom she conferred her favors, think that she really was in | |
love with him. She called it "being engaged." And,--if perchance she | |
came to possess a harem of fiances,--remember that the young things | |
of the period were not so well able to conduct their own courtings as | |
our present-day emancipated flappers. They still had to depend on | |
what the tide washed in. They still did their picking from those that | |
picked them--and sorted 'em over at their leisure. | |
Then, too, a half generation ago, we had not read our Freud. We did | |
not know the jargon of sex. Both man and girl were apt to call | |
"in love" the emotion which our present-day young things frankly call | |
something else. Thus came it that the petting parties of the period | |
operated under the left wing of a near-engagement. | |
Yet there was a weakness to the system. Each fiance had the lordly | |
impression that he "possessed" the lady of his choice. And the minute | |
the male feels that he possesses a woman, he can get all the | |
psychology of "riding away" and leaving her. Our Freudian flappers | |
are better strategians. Man simply can't labor under the impression | |
that he possesses a young person, if her lingo is calling the once | |
sacred kiss just a "flash of pash." Applied slang is a great leveller | |
of romance. | |
For times have changed since it was good form for a maid to avoid the | |
crass mention of sex. With prohibition has come such an outburst of | |
Get Moral Quick legislation that the reaction is now being felt | |
throughout the length and breadth of the flapper. The legislators | |
would lengthen the skirts to protect the defenceless male from a | |
chance thought of legs and the like. Whereat the flapper retaliates | |
by conversing pretty ceaselessly about--well, say associated | |
subjects. | |
Last season the writer, being of the genus Successfully Single, woke | |
up with a start to realize that two desirables had toyed with her | |
hook--and retreated. One of them had even exited, uttering a fatal | |
accusation about a "trammelled soul." Such a warning calls for a | |
taking of stock. And this is what I found: Because of the flappers | |
and the way they run shop, the whole technique of the man game has | |
changed. My method, alas, had become as out of style as a pompadour | |
Gibson hat. Where once girls pretended to know less and to have | |
experienced less than they actually had, now they pretend to more. | |
Therein lie all the law and the social profits. Therefore Rule One of | |
these dauntless rebels reads: It is not an insult but a compliment | |
for an admirer to explain that his intentions are frankly carnivorous. | |
To my ten-year-old technique had still been clinging the cobwebs of | |
the past, when even Launcelot's intentions were painted as slightly | |
honorable. But now--the shades of Alfred Lord Tennyson help us!--it | |
has become the smart procedure to take Man's bold bad intentions | |
right out into the conversation and pretend to be tempted by them. | |
The truth of the matter is that those pseudoengagements of the | |
fox-trot decade really were furnishing a charge account psychology. | |
Man could close his eyes and whisper, "Some day, my own," and still | |
go nicely on a Ladies Home Journal cover design of "Under the | |
Mistletoe." But, when our flapper is not even pretending to him that | |
she is going to marry him, and when he is not even pretending to | |
himself that he is going to marry her--well, the whole sex game has | |
then been put on a frank cash and carry basis. | |
Mark well, however, these worldly-wise young things of this the third | |
year of our Prohibition are not necessarily less virtuous technically | |
than their own crinolined grandmothers. Only these days they are not | |
bragging about their virtue. | |
"And have all the men afraid of you, for fear they'll be responsible | |
for teaching you something," explains one practical miss. "Men like | |
to find you in stock, ready-taught. We know how to take care of | |
ourselves--so we let them think what they want." In short, the whole | |
new game, as the earnest disciple from the half generation ago | |
learned it, is not to reveal the dark secret that you abide by the | |
Ten Commandments. Man must not suspect that you are unattainable. He | |
must just think that he has not attained you--yet. If you want to | |
compete with the flappers, you've got to play by the flapper rules. | |
Check your conversational inhibitions! | |
And if by chance there be any inhibitions left over, Prohibition has | |
obligingly introduced new opportunities for privacy, that will help | |
you check them too. When a couple strays off now from group | |
formation, there's a perfectly good alibi available of finding a | |
sheltered spot for a drink. Where once it really wasn't good form to | |
go to a man's hotel room, now it is the national custom for the owner | |
of hootch to register a casket for his jewel--and then invite the | |
young things in, one by one. A flapper these nights can retire to | |
that hotel bedroom for an hour in the middle of a dance. The girl is | |
not "talked about," and the place is not "pulled." Even the house | |
detective knows that she is innocently drinking a drink. | |
Thus has this rebel young generation forced out into the open country | |
with it all the contented young women in their late twenties and | |
early thirties, who may not have been feeling rebellious at all. And | |
the wives of forty-five also, to compete all over again for their own | |
husbands. For "poaching" on the wifely preserves has become the | |
favorite flapper sport! | |
"Married men," having been forbidden to unmarried young persons for | |
three chaste generations, our flappers, bi-product of inhibition, are | |
promptly appropriating the husbands. This one item of the flapper | |
raid on the married men has done more than the entire twentieth | |
century put together to change the smug structure of American | |
society, and bring us back to normalcy. | |
Before 1865 no Southern belle considered herself worth her salt | |
unless all the courtly old married men in the country kissed her hand | |
and competed with the young blades for her quadrilles. But when black | |
persons stopped buttoning up the shoes of the Quality, America | |
entered upon her 1870's, her sombre brown stone fronts, and her | |
cloistered husbands. The money for doing society had simply passed | |
into the hands of the descendants of Miles Standish and Priscilla, | |
who carried their consciences into their sober mansions with them. | |
The Age of Innocence was upon us, and has clung close ever since. | |
From that fatal day on to 1917 each oncoming debutante was taught by | |
her mother to give unto the genus, married man, her most impersonal | |
manner, lest she provoke his "undesirable attentions." If poaching | |
was done, it was from behind a tree. Unmarried girls knew that their | |
place was not in somebody else's home in those days. The wives could | |
protect their preserves by the simple expedient of "talking about" | |
any unmarried young female caught on the married reservations. | |
And so it came to pass that the pick of the men were posted, because, | |
as fast as a callow youth gets worth marrying, somebody promptly | |
marries him. The Fast Young Married Crowd was a closed corporation | |
and played exclusively within itself; the female of the species had | |
to compete only with females of equal tonnage. The only sylph-like | |
temptation that a husband could encounter was a dissolute person | |
whose reputation had already been ruined--and she didn't count, | |
because nobody invited her to parties anyway. A wife could get as fat | |
as she wanted to in those days. | |
Even today that same leisurely life might exist for the wives. Even | |
today the wives might be resting their feet under the bridge tables, | |
secure in the consciousness that no bobbed haired young poacher was | |
daring to dance with their husbands, if they had just let | |
prohibitions enough alone--if they had only not been swept away by | |
the high sport of gossiping about our Wild Young People, which struck | |
the country in the summer of 1920. This gossip was an intrinsic phase | |
of the virtue wave which always immediately precedes a crime wave. | |
The wives just at this point, instead of sitting tight, made the | |
strategic mistake of turning the full force of the ammunition of | |
gossip, which should have been saved for defending husbands from | |
poachers, into an offensive attack on the flapper's lip stick, on her | |
cigarettes, and on her petting parties. Whenever two or three wives | |
were gathered together, their topic was our Wild Young People. That | |
summer, too, saw the launching of that now seasoned romance about the | |
checking of corsets. The resolutions at clubs were being resolved. | |
The preachers were sermonizing. The up-state legislators were | |
drafting bills against flappers' smoking cigarettes. | |
Human nature can be pushed just so far. Instead of reforming, the | |
young things apparently decided one might as well lose a reputation | |
for stealing a husband as for smoking a cigarette. The whole arsenal | |
for combating poachers blew up. | |
To make matters worse, in the excitement of the virtue wave our Wild | |
Young People had been attacked as a group instead of as individuals. | |
That was the second mistake. The whole strength of gossip consists in | |
selecting one member of the clan for calumny, to stand out disgraced | |
and alone among her exemplary sisters. Because the flappers had been | |
gossiped about en masse, the whole reason for not being gossiped | |
about had ceased. The poacher of that half generation ago had been | |
the kind of a girl who stalked her game alone. | |
But, when all the girls in town are seeking to steal your husband, | |
what are you going to do about it, if you are a woman of forty-five | |
with a heaviness around the hips and a disinclination to learn the | |
camel walk? Nor can you get the poachers off the scent by crossing | |
the trail with an eligible bachelor. Logically, the young things | |
should have enough sense to ignore a preempted husband and attend to | |
the serious business of getting themselves husbands. But they | |
haven't. They seem to prefer the husbands of the other women. And | |
curiously, the more they engage in this exotic sport of poaching, the | |
less keen they become about owning a property for somebody else to | |
poach on. | |
The real interstate joke on Puritanism is that the flapper, who flaps | |
because Puritanism has driven her to it, will automatically bring | |
about its cure. The whole vitality of Puritanism rests on the | |
unswerving principle of letting not thy right hand know what thy left | |
hand doeth, if thy left hand is doing something it shouldn't. | |
Puritanism could not last out a week-end without the able assistance | |
of the standardized double life. | |
And that is just what the flappers refuse to respect. They are even | |
insisting on being taken along on the parties, which, by all the | |
rules of Rolf and Comstock should be confined to man's double life. | |
Where the chorus lady was once the only brand that had the proper and | |
improper equipment to jazz up an evening, now mankind has come to | |
prefer the flapper, who drinks as much as the Broadwayite, is just as | |
peppy and not quite so gold-diggish. | |
"It is so simple," smiles Barbara nonchalantly blowing her smoke | |
rings. "You old dears set man an impossible standard. As he had | |
always to be pretending holy emotions whenever he was around you he | |
just naturally had to get away half the time, to rest the muscles of | |
his inhibitions. Why, you funny old things actually drove man into | |
his double life, just as you made all of his best stories have two | |
editions, one for a nice girl and one for--well say one not so nice. | |
Our crowd has done more than all of your silly old social hygiene | |
commissions to bring nearer the single standard--by going part way to | |
meet him." | |
The preachers are wasting their time when they rail that the flappers | |
are painting their faces like "fallen women." Of course they are | |
painting them that way--for the very good reason that mankind has | |
demonstrated too unmistakably that that kind of woman has "a way with | |
her." | |
Not so long ago cosmetics became a moral issue. The curl rag was the | |
only beautifier that somehow never lost its odor of sanctity--and | |
that was doubtless because curl rags were a perfectly logical part of | |
the long-sleeved Canton flannel nightgown civilization. Curls | |
couldn't be so very wrong when they were so frightfully unbecoming in | |
the making. And so the "good woman" handed over intact to her weaker | |
sister every beautifier that the world had been eight thousand years | |
accumulating. | |
Slowly, timidly the allurements returned. The talcum powder bought | |
for baby surreptitiously reached the nose. When the half generation | |
ago was young, we had adopted a certain lip salve, just one shade | |
darker than the way lips come, explaining, to save our reputations, | |
that we were keeping our lips from chapping. Rouge too had come | |
coyly; back--but--and here's the gist of the whole matter--in polite | |
society paint was put on to imitate nature. | |
We were still doing our make-up as man conducted his double | |
life--with intent to deceive the general public. We still belonged at | |
heart to the Puritan era, in spite of our wicked fox-trot. All may | |
have been artificial below the neck, from our Gossard corsets with | |
their phalanx of garters on to our hobble skirts. But above the neck, | |
we pretended it was natural. | |
The flapper has changed all that. She has turned the lady up side | |
down, as well as the world. For the flapper is au naturale below the | |
neck. Above the neck she is the most artificially and entertainingly | |
painted creature that has graced society since Queen Elizabeth. With | |
one bold stroke of a passionately red lip stick, she has painted out | |
Elaine the Fair and the later-day noble Christie Girl and painted in | |
an exotic young person, meet to compete alike with a Ziegfield show | |
girl, with a heavenborn Egyptian princess or even a good Queen Bess, | |
who could not move her face after it was dressed up for the morning. | |
And Bess was the Virgin Queen. The American-Victorian is indeed the | |
only era in history when cosmetics became a moral issue. Even in dour | |
Cromwellian England, rouge registered the wrong politics but not | |
immorality. We are merely getting back to normalcy in cosmetics--back | |
behind the dun wall of the Victorian era. | |
And it is the flapper who has done it for us. What's more, she has | |
done it frankly and purposefully--because the reformer, in his naive | |
innocence, has explained to her that what she is doing is wicked and | |
will get that kind of "results." Similarly those of 'em who had not | |
yet taken off their corsets at dances, promptly did so when shocked | |
elders began repeating the corset checking story. Dear heart, the | |
only reason that they had not done so before was because the little | |
dears hadn't heard that the worst people were using ribs instead of | |
whalebone that season. | |
Vice would die out from disuse, if the reformers did not advertise. | |
Nonsenseorship (illustrated) | |
Nonsenseorship (plaintext) | |
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