Flappers
Although the flapper girl is symbolic of the Roaring Twenties, the origin of the word as referring to the image of Charles Dana Gibson’s Gibson Girl is obscure. Three centuries earlier the word flap referred to a young prostitute in England, by the 1890s flapper could refer to any active young girl, usually in her teens. In the United States it came to refer to the girls who emulated the Gibson Girl, first appearing as a style in the silent film The Flapper in 1920. Throughout the 1920s Clara Bow and Joan Crawford built their early careers around the style. Flappers were considered rebellious, pushing what was acceptable behavior by women in public, such as smoking and drinking.
Flappers were, because of their appearance and their more carefree, less restricted behavior, highly controversial among older generations who observed them with sniffing disapproval. Businesses, especially banks, received complaints from women – wives and mothers – who claimed that their sons and husbands were unduly attracted to transact business with the young women dressed as flappers, demanding dress codes be imposed. So many banks complied that the dress regulations spread to the Federal Reserve. In 1930 the flappers were immortalized by a cartoon caricature named Betty Boop.