Flappers had their origins in the period of liberalism, social and political turbulence and increased transatlantic cultural exchange that followed the end of the First World War, as well as the export of American jazz culture to Europe.
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Flappers had their origins in the period of liberalism, social and political turbulence and increased transatlantic cultural exchange that followed the end of the First World War, as well as the export of American jazz culture to Europe.
United States
In the United States, popular contempt for Prohibition was a factor in the rise of the flapper. With legal saloons and cabarets closed, back alley speakeasies became prolific and popular. This discrepancy between the law-abiding, religion-based temperance movement and the actual ubiquitous consumption of alcohol led to widespread disdain for authority. Flapper independence may also have its origins in the Gibson girls of the 1890s. Although that pre-war look does not resemble the flapper identity, their independence and feminism may have led to the flapper wise-cracking tenacity 30 years later.Fact: date=October 2008
Writers in the United States such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Anita Loos, and illustrators such as Russell Patterson, John Held Jr., Ethel Hays and Faith Burrows popularized the flapper look and lifestyle through their works, and flappers came to be seen as attractive, reckless and independent. Among those who criticized the flapper craze was writer-critic Dorothy Parker. She penned "Flappers: A Hate Song" to poke fun at the fad.
A related but alternative use of the word "flapper" in the late 1920s was as a media catch word that referred to adult women voters and how they might vote differently than men their age. While the term "flapper" had multiple uses, flappers as a social group were well defined from other 1920s fads.
United Kingdom
The term flapper first appears in an early Sports Illustrated magazine (not the same magazine in print today) in a two-page spread where the flapper spread her legs. It may be in reference to a young bird flapping its wings while learning to fly, or it may derive from an earlier use in northern England to mean "teenage girl" (whose hair is not yet put up), or "prostitute".
While many in the United States assumed at the time that the term flapper derived from a fashion of women wearing galoshes unbuckled so that they could show people their bodies as they walked, the term was already documented as in use in the United Kingdom as early as 1912. From the 1910s into the 1920s, flapper was a term for any impetuous teenage girl, often including women under 30. Only in the 1920s did the term take on the meaning of the flapper-generation style and attitudes.
Behavior
thumb|right|"Where there's smoke there's fire" by Russell Patterson, showing a fashionably dressed flapper in the 1920s Flappers behavior was unheard of at the time and redefined womens roles forever. Flappers went to jazz clubs at night where they dance provocatively, smoked cigarettes through long holders, sniffed cocaine (which was legal at the time) and dated freely. They rode bicycles and drove cars and drank alcohol openly, a defiant act in the American period of Prohibition. Petting became more common than in the Victorian era. Petting Parties, where petting ("making out" and/or foreplay) was the main attraction, became popular.
