Sex was a favourite topic of conversation among flappers. ‘We talk of everything,’ wrote a young woman in Eve magazine, ‘we do not rule out one single emotion or experience as being impossible or improper.’ Feminism informed and animated such behaviour. In the Twenties feminists encouraged their sisters to use birth control as a way to obtain freedom from birthing, domestic responsibility and lack of money. Contraceptives also offered women the chance to explore their impulses, tastes and capacity for pleasure. The intellectual Dora Russell described sex as ‘a thing of dignity, beauty and delight’ for women – ‘even without children, even without marriage’, physical satisfaction was possible for all. The most influential propagandist of the period was Marie Stopes. She established a birth control clinic in London, and disseminated knowledge of contraception through her book Married Love, a bestseller on its publication in 1918. Stopes encouraged women to see themselves as more than ‘the passive instrument of man’s need’, and to explore sexual pleasure as something of ‘supreme value in itself’.
This was a revolution without an articulated aim or ideology, yet the flappers were, in their own style, practical feminists. It was absolutely outrageous, according to some journalists, that a young, unchaperoned woman should be seen in public with a young man, let alone meet him in private. Meanwhile, the consequences of liaisons among the unmarried were too horrifying to be named: the newspapers referred to the increasing numbers of unmarried women who became pregnant as being in ‘a certain condition’. Fathers lectured their daughters on the dangers of lechery, drunkenness and stopping out late. Girls were warned that a quarter of London taxis participated in the slave trade; they had no handles on the inside, so passengers could not escape.
Ignoring the propaganda, the flappers strutted on the nocturnal streets of England’s cities, looking for places to dance. Upper-and upper-middle-class girls would be dropped off at classes in hotels or private houses by a chaperone or chauffeur, while those lower down the social scale would walk or take the tram or bus to lessons at the town hall. To a piano accompaniment, the teacher would help them master the steps of the dance currently in vogue. The jive, the one-step, the Black Bottom, the Lindy Hop, the shimmy, the Varsity Drag and the fast foxtrot all enjoyed brief popularity during the decade; from 1925 everyone was doing the Charleston, described by an outraged newspaper as ‘freakish, degenerate, negroid’.
Most of the new dances came from the United States, and were characterized by vigour, gaiety and informality. Unlike the pre-war waltzes, everyone could do the Black Bottom, however they were dressed and wherever they happened to be. They were democratic dances for an age of burgeoning democracy. Some of the new steps had been imported by American soldiers, who had stayed in England after the end of the war; others featured in the American films that were shown in cinemas across the country. They were known as ‘rag dances’ because they were accompanied by ragtime piano tunes, or by the music that would come to define the decade – jazz. The word ‘jazz’ – a Creole euphemism for sex – covered a multitude of musical forms with syncopated rhythm, intermittent improvisation and an air of freedom and exultation. From its opening in 1919, the Palais de Danse in London’s Hammersmith hosted American jazz groups such as the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Outside of London, the purpose-built dance halls would arrive a little later.
Flappers also danced the night away at private parties. An upper-class hostess would invite friends round, often at only a few hours’ notice, and after dinner the guests danced to ragtime music. If there were no musicians available a gramophone would suffice, since they had become much cheaper and more compact; in the absence of a gramophone, a wireless would do. Chaperones, known as ‘dancing mothers’, or more colloquially as ‘alarm clocks’ and ‘fire extinguishers’, would keep an eye on proceedings.
The other great dancing venues of the period were the nightclubs, which opened across London despite being regularly persecuted under the 1914 Defence of the Realm Act. The act, which had given wartime government extensive powers over society and culture, allowed the government to shut down places of entertainment should they be used for ‘immoral’ purposes. This gave nightclubs an air of illegality, which was enhanced by reports of the drug-fuelled orgies that supposedly took place inside them. The flappers who congregated at underground clubs such as the frequently raided ‘43’ on Soho’s Gerrard Street would mingle with aristocratic bohemians, the criminal elite, Oxbridge undergraduates and sports personalities. This establishment was run by the redoubtable Irishwoman Kate Meyrick, until she was caught serving intoxicating liquor without a licence and sent to prison for six months. Undaunted, she opened the Silver Slipper after her release, a club famous for its glass dance floor.
Other forms of pleasure available to flappers at clubs included cocktails and cigarettes. It was the first time women had smoked cigarettes in public, and the flappers flaunted their freedom by using ostentatiously long cigarette holders. Cocktails were regarded by many as the most romantic expression of modern life; Martinis, Manhattans, Bronxes and White Ladies all took their turn as the drink of choice. Some nightclubs also offered a new form of entertainment called ‘cabaret’, which consisted of floor shows featuring music, dance and song, with the performers either on stage or moving between the tables.
It would have been impossible to perform the dances favoured by the flappers, or to engage in other pursuits such as tennis, cycling and riding pillion on a motorcycle, in the laces, buttons and hoops that had impeded women’s breathing and movement before the war. Simplicity, lightness and comfort were all, with Coco Chanel’s ‘little black dress’ of 1926 emblematic of the period. Along with simplicity came inexpensiveness: dresses could be sewn at home from a single yard of fabric, and if the fabric was rayon, or ‘artificial silk’, the saving was all the greater.
For the first time in history, women aspired to boyish figures, with straight waists, flat chests and slender thighs, hips and buttocks. Achieving the desired androgynous physique was not easy for some, and many flappers turned to diets, massage, swimming and exercises, while others relied on clothes to suggest boyish slenderness. Where corsets had once accentuated the bust, breasts were now flattened by tight bodices or brassieres. Waists were eliminated, along with hips, by dresses that were straight, loose and cylindrical, and by baggy trousers. In donning trousers, some flappers wanted to allude to the uniforms factory women had worn during the war; it was a way of celebrating social and political emancipation. They also used clothes to proclaim their pleasure in sex and fleshliness. Flapper dresses, often dipping low at the front and back, were sleeveless and short; their skirts inched up the legs as the decade progressed.
‘In times of war and social upheaval,’ commented one fashion expert, ‘the tendency for women to cut off their hair seems almost to be irresistible.’ The bobs and the crops were often topped by the fashion sensation of the decade – the cloche hat spawned scores of imitations, and helmet-like hats appeared in shops everywhere. Some flappers preferred to wear them so low that the brim covered their eyebrows, but those who put on make-up raised the brims to show off the kohl and mascara around their eyes. Through such cosmetic means these women would achieve the desired look for a particular evening: ‘ethereal’ and ‘starved’ were among the most popular. Flappers who preferred a mischievous ‘little-girl’ pose painted their lips in a ‘cupid’s bow’ shape. Their widespread application of make-up was another audacious gesture; before the war cosmetics had been generally associated with whores and actresses.