How did the flappers of the 20s lay the foundation for woman today?
The young women of the 20s took to shortening their skirts and cutting their hair, wearing make-up, dancing, smoking, drinking, and driving cars and aeroplanes. They wanted to have fun, and they shocked the older generation with their frivolity. They also became obsessed with being thin, so they could wear the 20s fashions which required slim figures and flat chests. The flappers were not interested in the things that had interested the pre-WW1 generation of ‘New Women’ – education, careers, and social reform. After women got the vote in 1920, interest in women’s issue died away, and the National American woman Suffrage Association was transfomred in the Leauge of women Voters, and membership plunged to one-tenth of what it had been. Fewer women entered the professions. Dr Lillian Walsh, a longtime practitioner, commented sadly that women doctors had become as fashionable as ‘a horse and buggy’. The idea that a woman might stay single and pursue a career, rather than marry, had gone ou
