The Twenties Woman Flappers Birth Control Young Women
The Twenties Woman Flappers Birth Control
Young Women Change the Rules • Involvement in WWI • Assertion of independence • Rejection of traditional values • Demand for same freedoms as men • 19 th Amendment-1920
New Work Opportunities • After WWI Women still looked for paid work – Women’s professions • 10 million earning wages by 1930 – Earned less than men – Never reached managerial positions
Flappers • Flapper = an emancipated young woman who embraced the new fashions and urban attitudes of the 20 s • The Look… – – – – Close-fitting felt hats Bright waistless dresses Hemlines above the knee Skin colored stockings Pumps Strings of beads Dark colored, short, boyish hairstyles (bobs)
• Smoked cigarettes, drank in public • Openly talking about sex • New dances – Fox trot, tango, Charleston, shimmy
New Dances • The Charleston • The Shimmy
Double Standard • Media showed the “new woman” as a flapper • Morals loosened only so far – Protests from churches and schools • No more “courting” 1 woman • Double standard – Greater sexual freedom to men – Women torn between new standards and old expectations
Changing Families • Birthrate dropped faster in 1920 s – Birth control more available – Clinics opened • Technology simplified housework – Ready-made clothes, canned food, sliced bread • Greater equality in marriages – Based on love – Children in school
Education and Popular Culture The Roaring 20’s
Schooling America • 1926: 4 million in HS – Higher job standards • Vocational schools • Teach immigrants!
Media • National Newspapers • Magazines: Time (1923) • Radio= most common – shared national experience – “Tune In”
Heroes and Celebrities • 1929: Spent $4. 5 billion on entertainment • Sports Heroes – Babe Ruth: baseball • Celebrities – Charles A. Lindbergh: pilot
Charles Lindberg/ Babe Ruth • The Century Boom to Bust Part 3
Entertainment and the Arts • The Jazz Singer 1927: first movie with sound – “Talkies” doubled movie attendance
Writers of the 1920’s • F. Scott Fitzgerald – Critique of gilded surroundings • Edna St. Vincent Millay – Youth and independence • Ernest Hemingway – Critique of war
Slang in the 1920’s
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