Under Construction Journal Issue 6.1 UNDER CONSTRUCTION JOURNAL 6.1 | Page 22

Flappers in ‘Vogue’: Exploring how women’s liberated identities are shaped and formed within
consumer capitalism
Chloe Dawson • PhD in Sociology, Keele University
This paper explores the flapper subculture of the 1920s and how this expression of
liberation and rebellion against traditional gender norms was represented on the front
pages of Vogue magazine (from 1920-1929). Today, popular feminism is often
critiqued for its close relationship with consumer capitalism, resulting in women’s
liberation being tied to capitalist success and losing its critical roots. The larger project
from which this paper is derived is interested in how women’s liberated identity has
previously been tied to consumer culture. More importantly, it asks how useful
women’s liberated identity can be when it is adopted by consumer capitalism: in the
process it utilises the philosophical works of Jacques Lacan, Simone de Beauvoir, and
Michel Foucault relating to power and the formation of gender. Specifically, Vogue is
used as a case study in relation to these critical frameworks to uncover how this figure
of the flapper was presented and marketed. It asks: what can the relationship between
the flapper subculture and consumer culture offer for any contemporary critique of
postfeminism’s relationship with both consumer culture and neo-liberal ideologies.
Keywords: Flapper, identity construction, consumer capitalism, neoliberalism, liberation
Introduction
The flapper is a well-known cultural icon of the Roaring Twenties, defined by her curveless figure, bobbed
hair, and red lipstick, and remembered for a rebellious spirit. For Keller, these women are the
‘quintessential images of urban modernity in the early twentieth century’; the flapper was scandalous,
and celebrated a “new, openly artificial standard of femininity”. The flapper attempted to create an
autonomous identity for women, one which challenged the previous century’s gender norms in an era of
women’s newfound emancipation. Not only did they attempt this through the above-mentioned
aesthetics, but also through physical activity and intruding into the domain of typically masculine
activities, such as driving and smoking. The flapper further coded behaviour previously considered as
representing deviant forms of femininity into common norms: examples included bold make-up and
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