Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

These days, the flapper girl of the 1920s lives only in caricature. She's the young woman wearing a fringed dress and bobbed hair, with a cigarette in one hand and liquor flask in the other. She kicks wildly to the Charleston or wears her boyfriend's oversized raccoon coat.

The flapper was a scandal to the establishment of her day. Swearing, drinking, wearing garish makeup but no corset, she was the antithesis of the mother and grandmother who embodied Victorian sensibilities. She boldly fashioned a new wardrobe, a new set of morals, and even a new radical lexicon. Flappers were responsible for inventing such zoologically inspired linguistic concoctions as the bee's knees, the cat's meow, the clam's garters and the eel's hips, amongst many other novel expressions.

But where did the flapper acquire her unusual name? This word has a surprisingly tangled history. In the late 19th century, flapper meant both "prostitute" and "young teenage girl" -- the latter from the notion that her hair was worn in a braid tied with a large bow that "flapped" against her back.

A flapper was also a young duck or partridge just learning to fly and therefore erratic and unpredictable, just like the "flighty" young woman.

The moniker may have been reinforced by the Charleston, the dance rage of the Roaring Twenties characterized by wildly flapping limbs.

Radio Script > Flapper