Lesbian affairs, all-night sex and cocaine..: Wild lives of Gatsby-era flappers

UK Daily Mail ^ | May 14, 2013 | Deni Kirkova and Martha De Lacey

[C19fan]

Money flowed, jazz music rang out, and fashionable young women in 1920s London, Paris and New York set aside behaviour previously deemed 'appropriate' in favour of high spirits, short skirts, hedonism and social liberation. These giddy, creative, enthusiastic women of the Roaring Twenties' were named 'flappers' because of their effervescent personalities. They were writers, actresses, painters, society heiresses, and they were a new breed of women typified by newly bobbed hair, thick make-up and predilections for smoking, drinking, dancing the Charleston... and then some. As Baz Luhrmann's new cinematic remake of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby prepares for release, global interest in the era is piquing.

[Tax-chick]

I heard a Jack White rock song, “Love is Blindness,” from the “soundtrack” on the radio this morning. I kind of liked the song, but it didn’t make me think of Robert Redford in Newport or anything fun ... just weird-looking Jack White.

[fieldmarshaldj]

I disagree. I hardly see anyone that looks like that today. You have to hunt high and low to find someone with that period look. I just think so many of them looked very haggard (or very hard), chubby-faced, and old before their time. It wasn’t just the ‘20s. I don’t think “modern females” as we see today looked as such until the mid ‘60s.

[stuartcr]

???

[reg45]

It was called “The Jazz Age”. Using rap or hip-hop music is anachronistic. Will they be using iPhones to communicate also?

[Tax-chick]

I just think so many of them looked very haggard (or very hard),

"Dentistry," as P.J. O'Rourke so wisely observed. Also, epidemic infectious disease. The "Roaring 20s" were immediately preceded by the Spanish Flu epidemic.

And they had no air conditioning, although they didn't need it in Newport.

[Resolute Conservative]

I watch no movie at home or theater that has crap music, I mean rap music in it. Happily I still get to watch all of my favorite made before 1970 or so back to the golden era.

[dfwgator]

Rap music is an oxymoron.

[Resolute Conservative]

A slut is a slut in any time period.

[svcw]

Not the nazi or Empirical Japan...but lose morals - oookkay

[fr_freak]

The women of today are basically no different than the women of the 20’s.

Not sure that is entirely true. Back in the 1920s, people were much more likely to be able to trace their ancestry to one or two main ethnicities. One might say "I'm Irish" or "I'm Italian". Nowadays, people still say that sort of thing, but instead of being 100% Irish, they might be half or a quarter, mixed in with German, Swedish, or whatever. In addition, we had a major change in demographics occur in the mid-20th century which brought a number of ethnic groups into the gene pool that we didn't have much of before. So, while the differences may be subtle, I'd say the appearance of your average woman in the US might be different than the 1920s.

Being from California, I've noticed a distinct difference in the overall appearance of people when I'm on the East coast, especially, New York or New Jersey area. I think that is partly because Californians tend to be mutts more, whereas New Yorkers seem to still have ethnic enclaves. Just an idle theory, though.

[svcw]

Well, fake “boobs”, I guess since women bound themselves to be flat.

[count-your-change]

What made “the roaring twenties” roar was the economy with the nearly quadrupling within a few years.

[dfwgator]

the economy with the nearly quadrupling within a few years.

It was a "house of cards."

[reg45]

Is Beyoncé such a one-trick-pony that she could not have spent a few hours listening to old Ella Fitzgerald recordings and tried to sing in the style of the era?

[dfwgator]

Why sing just one note, when you can sing ten notes?

[Jack Hammer]

“Money flowed, jazz music rang out, and fashionable young women in 1920s London, Paris and New York set aside behaviour previously deemed ‘appropriate’ in favour of high spirits, short skirts, hedonism and social liberation.”

And they reaped World War II, the greatest mass slaughter in the recorded history of Earth.

Wonder if the two were related?

[dfwgator]

And wasn’t this all in the middle of Prohibition?

[GraceG]

Flappers caused WWII??? Thats a stretch. No, the very onerous armistice terms forced on Germany after WWI are the primary cause of WWII. The Germans were resentful, and, being Germans, didn’t stay down for long.

Even now, after being decimated during WWII and split apart for 45 years afterwards, who’s running Europe? The Germans. (but I digress)

Not the ones in the US, but the ones in europe, thing cabaret in Germany which was inspired by the flapper “culture”...

[Opinionated Blowhard]

That is the irony about Liberal lies about our history. Back in the 1910s, it was the Dems who were truly evil nanny-staters who wanted to keep blacks down by legislative means and flat out terror. Their political conventions in the 20s were dominated by the Klan. And they wanted to impose a religious-based nanny-state on the country. As you said, they advocated Prohibition and it was the Republicans (led by Pennsylvania Republicans) who fought against it. They were everything they usually accuse Republicans of being.

[McGruff]

Sounds like someone is rewriting history to promote some movie.