What best describes a flapper?

Answer 1

Interestingly, this term was at first used as an insulting way to describe middle and upper-class young women who were rejecting conservative social norms in the 1920s; they chose to wear short hair (traditionally, women were expected to keep their hair long) and they refused to wear long dresses or dress in a way that was favored by traditionalists. They not only chose their own comfortable and casual style of dress; they also chose their favorite music-- they preferred the new kinds of dance music, some of which involved moving the body in a way the older people considered too suggestive. Further, these young women enjoyed going to parties (considered shocking in a culture that previously regulated every activity in which young women were allowed to participate).

There are several suggested reasons why these young women were called "flappers"-- one is that they flapped their arms while dancing-- but the word came to mean a shallow and superficial young lady who only cared about partying and being popular. Naturally, some women objected to this stereotype: they saw no harm in wanting to have some fun (the 1920s were, after all, a decade of great social change, with women getting the vote, more women going to college, etc) but many were also in favor of equality for women, and they did not see themselves as shallow or superficial at all.