I have always had a soft spot for "The Roaring Twenties", which was an era of great social, political, economic and cultural shocks around the world, an era in which a hundred schools of thought contended and thought made a great leap forward, and it was also an era of gorgeous luxury and varied customs. But a more important factor for me is that it was an era of great liberation of women.
Before the First World War, most women didn’t work, having children, and cooking and sewing were the center of their lives. The war has changed all this, millions of men have joined the battlefield, and society has to recruit women to join the traditional male-dominated industries. Women go out of their homes to join the workforce. They have high incomes and achieved economic independence. After the war, they didn’t want to give up their jobs, and they began to seek equality in social status. In December 1918, women over the age of 30 in Britain had the right to vote for the first time and participated in the general election after the First World War. In August 1920, the US Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. All this has completely changed the situation that women are attached to men, and freed them from their social status of being dominated by their fathers before marriage and being subservient to their husbands after marriage. Women have taken a big step forward independently. At that time, women began to receive higher education and entered the university gate.
The new women in "Roaring Age" broke away from the conservative female image in Victorian era and were liberated from red tape. They took off their heavy corsets, put on bras and underwear, put on loose and invisible low-waisted straight skirts and sleeveless dresses, gradually pulled their skirts above their knees, put on high-heeled shoes, and wore a lively bell-shaped hat on their heads. They also cut their long hair into wavy short hair, which is called "Bob Hairdresses" with masculine meaning.
The change of clothing also means the change of thought, and the freedom of clothing brings the freedom of thought. Modern women in "Roaring Age" are the first batch of modern women. They are flesh and blood. They are self-reliant and are not monitored by family and society. They challenged and completely subverted the old Victorian traditions. They smoked, they drank, they wore heavy makeup and hung around jazz bars. They were sexually open and boldly expressed their contempt for the old customs.
They are called "Flapper" (meaning chicks that can fly just after leaving the nest).
Recently, I revisited the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald is known as the spokesman of "Roaring Age" and the founder of "Flying Wave Girl".
So I started from Fitzgerald to trace the origin of the "Flying Wave Girl".
Before the publication of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s autobiographical first novel This Side of Paradise (also translated as Paradise on Earth) was published in 1920, which caused a sensation in the literary world. The book tells the story of a sentimental young man with both talent and appearance who was disillusioned in pursuing the "American Dream" in the roaring age. Fitzgerald gives a detailed description of the protagonist’s development from pursuing pleasure to nihilism and decadence after repeated blows in life. There is no mention of the word "boomerang girl" in Paradise on Earth, but due to the success of the novel, Fitzgerald was praised as the founder of "boomerang girl" by the media at that time, and Fitzgerald therefore pursued his dream lover Zelda.
Fitzgerald followed suit. In 1920, he began to publish short stories about the culture of "boomers" in the Saturday Evering Post in Minnesota, where he lived, and opened the lifestyle of roaring age to middle-class families. In the same year, Fitzgerald’s collection of short stories named "The Philosopher and the Girl in the Wave" was published, which consolidated Fitzgerald’s position as the founder of "The Girl in the Wave".
If Fitzgerald is regarded as the founder of the "Feilaibo girl", then his wife Zelda is the prototype of the "Feilaibo girl". Zelda is a native of Alabama in the southern United States, and her father is a Supreme Court judge in Alabama. Zelda is naturally cheerful, free and unrestrained, and is proficient in ballet, French and poetry. The pampering of her family from childhood led to her being particularly proud and rebellious. She smoked and drank, danced all night and flirted with many men. She once said half jokingly, "I have kissed thousands of people, and I am going to kiss thousands more." Her hedonistic lifestyle shocked her family. However, Fitzgerald was attracted by her "brave, honest and fiery self-esteem", so she pursued Zelda like a storm.
One month after the publication of Paradise on Earth, they got married in new york. At that time, Fitzgerald’s reputation was rising. At that time, his short story could get thousands of dollars (equivalent to tens of thousands of dollars now). The couple live a life of indulgence and debauchery. They are guests at all parties, frequent customers in high-end shops and bars. Both of them openly claimed that Zelda was the inspiration for all the women in Fitzgerald’s novels. However, the good times did not last long, the marriage gradually broke down, Zelda fell into madness, and the most charming couple in the roaring era ended up killing each other.
The bitter and resentful ending between Fitzgerald and his wife is another story.
Lois Long, an American writer, is another person who left a mark on the "Flapper Culture" in the cultural history. Shortly after the publication of The The New York Times, she began to write under the pseudonym "Lipstick". Her column will record the life of "Fei Lai Bo Girl" in history. Her article also describes her real life in detail-dancing drunk all night. She often begins her column with "When Nights are Bold". ……
These modern girls, known as "Fei Lai Bo", have their own fashion idols: they worship movie stars Clara Bow and Louise Brooks for their clothes and manners on the screen.
Clara Bow’s nickname is "It Girl", which comes from her masterpiece "It" in 1927. Clara was once the most successful "flying girl" in Hollywood movies.
Anita Loos, an American playwright, made a film "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and its sequel "But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes", two works that mocked the "boomers". Louise Brooks auditioned for "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes". Although she was not selected, she and her classic bobo head have also become one of the prototypes of the image of "Flying Wave Girl" in Hollywood blockbusters.
As the first Asian-American actress to break the Hollywood barrier and gain international fame, Huang Liushuang also shows her image as a "wave girl" off-screen. Her agency encourages her to enrich and supplement the "exotic customs" on her screen with the daily image of "the girl who flies to Poland".
The era of "flying girl" came to an abrupt end at the beginning of the Great Depression in October 1929. After the stock market crash, the winter of economic crisis followed. The hedonistic inertia of the "Roaring Age" is unsustainable in the reality of economic depression, and it has become an untouchable history.
[This article is transferred from WeChat: Kailan (gh_0afc75dceb82). The original title is "The Girl Who Fly to Wave". The author Kai Lan dropped out of Fudan University in Shanghai in the late 1980s and studied in the United States. Since 1995, she has been engaged in corporate and securities law business. In 2007, he served as the Asian legal director of its transportation system at General Electric Company. In 2015, Kailan devoted herself to the communication and dissemination of literature, art and Chinese and Western cultures. In 2016, she initiated, planned and organized the first Shanghai International Poetry Festival. ]