What we
have learned
52 | Ceres Magazine | Oct/Nov 2015
The Roaring Twenties did not get its moniker by being quiet and submissive. The decade was loud and buoyant. It was an era of novelty, an exciting time of prosperity leading to new inventions, and in turn, to consumerism. With a booming economy, people were carefree and more willing to have fun. Art, literature, cinema, architecture and fashion found new roots with the advent of machines forcing cultural changes and promoting a new way of thinking, as life was made better and easier with less manual labor and more leisure time. Creativity surged, and new artistic movements flourished, some still influencing us today. From the whirlpool of ideas and tolerance of sociocultural genres, some of the greatest music in the world rose to stardom with Jazz, paving the way for memorable musicians, singers and entertainers.
It was definitely a time when the younger generation rebelled against the rigid Victorian values, provoking the elders with outrageous fashion statements and behaviors. But let's not forget that it was also a period of bitter cultural conflicts, pitting groups with different beliefs, faith, or views on economy, immigration and social status against each other, all in an orgy of moral speculation. With the Prohibition's Eighteenth Amendment failing its purpose of controlling alcohol consumption, gangsters, crime and terror developed as swiftly as bootlegging took over speakeasies.This discrepancy between the law-abiding temperance and the blithe consumption of liquors led to a complete disdain for authority, and saw the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, so prone to take the law in their own hands.
Amidst the social turmoil, Jazz bands, provocative dances, bootleggers, bathtub gin, petting parties and movie stars, a new woman emerged from the country's authoritarian past cocoon, and morphed into the modern woman of today. It wasn't easy for those women called Flappers either as a colloquial term, or a derogatory one. She had to affirm herself, so she first threw out the corset squeezing her entrails, left behind the Victorian values dictatorship, and dared to cut her hair and act as her male counterpart. For women, it represented the liberation from the past eras’ restrictions, and a way to engage in social life like dating instead of waiting for a suitor. She didn’t have much of a choice, after all. WWI had
Looking back at the Twenties, also known as the Jazz Age, proved to be a fun and enriching learning expe-rience, as discovering or rediscovering what the decade was famous for yielded not only a well of knowledge, it allowed me to better understand the social struggles women are still facing today—their origins, along with the victories, and the changes that have resulted from those past battles.
Illustrator John Held Jr. captured the image of the flapper almost perfectly with his famous caricatures featured in magazines like Time.