|
Flappers were a "new breed" of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms. Flappers had their origins in the liberal period of the Roaring Twenties, the social, political turbulence and increased transatlantic cultural exchange that followed the end of World War I, as well as the export of American jazz culture to Europe. ==Etymology== The slang word "flapper", describing a young woman, is sometimes supposed to refer to a young bird flapping its wings while learning to fly. However, it may derive from an earlier use in northern England to mean "teenage girl", referring to one whose hair is not yet put up and whose plaited pigtail "flapped" on her back;〔Evans, Ivan H. ''Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable'' (rev. ed.) New York: Harper & Row, 1981 ISBN 0-06-014903-5〕 or from an older word meaning "prostitute".〔.〕 The slang word "flap" was used for a young prostitute as early as 1631.〔Mabbe, James. ''Celestina'' IX. 110 "Fall to your flap, my Masters, kisse and clip"; 112 "Come hither, you foule flappes."〕 By the 1890s, the word "flapper" was emerging in England as popular slang both for a very young prostitute,〔.〕〔Savage, Jon. ''Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture''. New York: Viking, 2007. p. 202. ISBN 978-0-670-03837-4〕 and in a more general – and less derogatory sense – of any lively mid-teenage girl.〔Lowsley, Barzillai. ''A glossary of Berkshire words and phrases'' 1888 (E.D.S.): "Vlapper,.. applied in joke to a girl of the bread-and-butter age."〕 The word appeared in print as early as 1903 in the United Kingdom and 1904 in the United States, when novelist Desmond Coke used it in his college story of Oxford life, ''Sandford of Merton'': "There's a stunning flapper".〔.〕 In 1907 English actor George Graves explained it to Americans as theatrical slang for acrobatic young female stage performers. By 1908, newspapers as serious as ''The Times'' used it, although with careful explanation: "A 'flapper', we may explain, is a young lady who has not yet been promoted to long frocks and the wearing of her hair 'up'".〔.〕 In April 1908, the fashion section of London's ''The Globe and Traveler'' contained a sketch entitled "The Dress of the Young Girl" with the following explanation: Americans, and those fortunate English folk whose money and status permit them to go in freely for slang terms ... call the subject of these lines the 'flapper.' The appropriateness of this term does not move me to such whole-hearted admiration of the amazing powers of enriching our language which the Americans modestly acknowledge they possess ..., () in fact, would scarcely merit the honour of a moment of my attention, but for the fact that I seek in vain for any other expression that is understood to signify that important young person, the maiden of some sixteen years.The sketch is of a girl in a frock with a long skirt,"which has the waistline quite high and semi-Empire, ... quite untrimmed, its plainness being relieved by a sash knotted carelessly around the skirt." By November 1910, the word was popular enough for A. E. James to begin a series of stories in the ''London Magazine'' featuring the misadventures of a pretty fifteen-year-old girl and titled "Her Majesty the Flapper".〔James, A. E. ("Her Majesty the Flapper" ). ''London Magazine'' (November, 1910)〕 By 1911, a newspaper review indicates the mischievous and flirtatious "flapper" was an established stage-type.〔 In the play a mature married couple, Patricia and Michael, vainly pursue slang-talking teenagers Billy and Clare, and so "Clare, out of the charity of youth for enamoured maturity, indulges Michael with a little mild flirtation" before at the end finding real love with Billy, who is her own age. The actress playing the flapper is characterized as "full of youth and 'go'".〕 By 1912, the London theatrical impresario John Tiller, defining the word in an interview he gave to the ''New York Times'', described a "flapper" as belonging to a slightly older age group, a girl who has "just come out". Tiller's use of the phrase "come out" means "to make a formal entry into 'society' on reaching womanhood".〔Oxford English Dictionary〕 In polite society at the time, a teenage girl who had not "come out" would still be classed as a child. She would be expected to keep a low profile on social occasions and ought not to be the object of male attention. Although the word was still largely understood as referring to high-spirited teenagers gradually in Britain it was being extended to describe any impetuous immature woman. The use of the word increased during World War I, perhaps due to the visible emergence of young women into the workforce to supply the place of absent men; a ''Times'' article on the problem of finding jobs for women made unemployed by the return of the male workforce is headed "The Flapper's Future". Under this influence, the meaning of the term changed somewhat, to apply to "independent, pleasure-seeking, khaki-crazy young women".〔 By 1920, the term had taken on the full meaning of the flapper generation style and attitudes. In his lecture that year on Britain's surplus of young women caused by the loss of young men in war, Dr. R. Murray-Leslie criticized "the social butterfly type… the frivolous, scantily-clad, jazzing flapper, irresponsible and undisciplined, to whom a dance, a new hat, or a man with a car, were of more importance than the fate of nations".〔.〕 As the adoption of the term in America coincided with a fashion among teenage girls in the early 1920s for wearing unbuckled galoshes,〔("Flappers flaunt fads in footwear" ) ''The New York Times'' (January 29, 1922). The article alleges the origin of the fashion was a Douglas Fairbanks costume in the film ''The Three Musketeers'', in which he wore his boot-tops turned down.〕 a widespread false etymology held that they were called "flappers" because they flapped when they walked, as they wore their overshoes or galoshes unfastened, showing that they defied convention in a manner similar to the 21st century fad for untied shoelaces.〔.〕〔Strong, Marion in .〕 By the mid-1930s in Britain, although still occasionally used, the word "flapper" had become associated with the past. In 1936 a ''Times'' journalist grouped it with terms such as "blotto" as out-dated slang: "(blotto) evokes a distant echo of glad rags and flappers ... It recalls a past which is not yet 'period'."〔''The Times'' (London, England): "Delivering Drunkards", December 2, 1936, p. 15〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Flapper」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|