19. The 'flapper' era or the 'Roaring Twenties' socially for Women's Civil Rights in USA
- Created by: Alasdair
- Created on: 05-06-17 15:12
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- The 'flapper' era or the 'Roaring Twenties' socially for Women's Civil Rights in USA
- Relaxing of social standards and pressure
- Women wore less restricting clothes
- Had shorter hair
- Smoked
- More ostentatious about sexuality, with short skirts and more 'darling' behaviour
- Symbolised by 'flappers'
- Seemingly more independent and emancipated younger women of 1920s going against Victorian norms wearing skirts short (as high as just above the knee) and cutting hair short
- In conservative, rural USA limited acceptance of change
- Women would find it difficult behave in this new way, such as to wear skirts and hair short and smoke
- In areas of USA suffering from fall of farm prices, there was little available money for make-up, fashion or nightclubs
- Urban centres, greater overt sexuality ended up with women become sex objects to attract men and increased double standards rather than achieving greater independence and emancipation
- Pressure on women to be fashionable and alluring before marriage
- Then expected to adapt to become demure housewives
- Set tone for suburban culture of post-1945 America
- Then expected to adapt to become demure housewives
- Problem with sexualisation when birth control limited and abortions still main means of preventing birth
- Suggestion 1 million illegal abortions a year before 1973
- Main method of contraception (diaphragm) made available in 1917 in a clinic in New York run by birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger
- She was arrested for obscenity
- Limited acceptance of birth-control advice
- Import birth-control devices only made legal in 1936
- Reluctance to use contraceptive devices
- Men unwilling to use condoms
- Diaphragms difficult and unhygienic to use for poorer women without running water
- Pill not available until late 1950s and not until 1973 was abortion legalised
- Women faced massive social disapproval if they were promiscuous or gave birth to illegitimate children
- Men who fathered children not treated this way
- Had no really reliable and widespread control over bodies until after 1945 and even faced problems once married in adjusting to different sexual role
- Compounded a lot of rather tendentious sexual theories that women lacked capacity for pleasure that men had and envied penis
- Relaxing of social standards and pressure
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