Reading.....Flapper

I just finished this book, and WOW! I absolutely loved it. The book centers around the concept of the "flapper," but really is more of a comprehensive social history of modern culture. Before I read this book I mostly associated "flappers" with superficial things like glamorous 20s fashions, bobbed hair, and the Charleston. The ostentatious rebellion present in this new method of dressing and behavior didn't really resonate with me until I read this book. Although I think it's fair to say that every generation feels a tension with their parents' generation, the chasm between Victorian values and the advent of the modern world was much greater than that between, say, me and the baby boomers.

Zeitz structures the book around some of the more prominent individuals of the decade, including:

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

Lois Long

Coco Chanel

Louise Brooks

Although I've always been intrigued with the Roaring Twenties (who isn't?), after reading this book, I'm looking at that era of excess and indulgence in a somewhat darker light. Basically, we have the 20s to thank for the pervasive mass consumerism of our culture. It was at this time that Madison Avenue advertising executives transformed the flapper into a caricature and turned from advertising based on objective, factual information to advertising based on the concept of selling a dream or a lifestyle. It was also in the 1920s that the homogenization of American culture began in earnest, as farm girls in the midwest learned to emulate big city styles and mores. Unique regional values and traditions started to slip away thanks to radio, advertising, and the advent of silent films, leaving a culture based on pipe dreams and credit. As with any form of progress, it seems we often merely trade one set of problems for another.