My first source for evaluation is a secondary source that is an online article, “The Unknown Clara Bow”. This article was written by William Cramer on February 24, 1998. Cramer’s purpose of this article was to educate and inform those who are interested in learning about flapper culture and, more specifically, Clara Bow. Cramer contains detailed knowledge of Bow through many sources, which he has cited on his website, from authors and historians who have focused on the 1920s with credible references and books on this time period.
A value to this source is the amount of credible information provided with Bow’s films and quotes on her, as well as interviews discussing her success with other successful people of the 1920s. This is seen when Cramer includes quotes from Adela Rogers St. Johns and David Stenn. Another value of this source is the following of the main purpose by documentation of Bow’s lifestyle by including true accounts and evidence from her life from other sources. A limitation to this source is that it was published around 7 decades after Clara Bow’s stardom.
That causes a slight boundary between the changing of the events that actually occurred with how he explains Bow’s young actress lifestyle. A last limitation of the source is that it is one sided. Cramer only includes positive information of the impacts of Clara Bow. Even though all are true, there are no explanations or evidence of a possibly opposing side against Bow and her accomplishments. My second source is a primary online source which is a clip of a magazine article. This article is called “The Psychology of the Knees” and it was written in June of 1922.
The purpose of the article was to report on the strangeness and new revelation of women changing their wardrobe by showing more skin in a satirical manner. The newspaper publishing company, Not for Old Fogies, focused on the changing woman and discussed the bias in the media that only focused on a woman’s behavior and not a man’s. A value to this source is that it was written in the prime of the flapper culture and it contributes true ideas from people of the time and opposing thoughts of the new wardrobe changes.
Another value of this article is that the new wardrobe change was seen as almost scandalous to many, due to the statement in the article that “women are becoming ‘revealed”. A limitation to this article is that it is very short and one sided with its argument, by saying that this change is racy and risky according to the older population, but the fashion change should not be frowned upon and that women should be able to wear whatever they want. One last limitation is that the message listed is satirical in its content by saying “the world is learning that girls… ave KNEES. ”
This can cause confusion and misunderstandings of the true message behind the article. Criterion B Throughout the late 1910s and the 1920s, a new average young woman had been created and the old perspective had changed dramatically. An “emancipation of female form” had arose to create a movement in women’s behavior and fashion worldwide known as flapper culture. In the United States in the 1920s, many famous actresses of that time would portray young women in the popular short, silent, black and white films as a “flapper” girls.
These younger women in their prime were girls who liked to party, drink, smoke, and were embracing their sexuality through many love interests. This extraordinary lifestyle change also came with a fashion change as well. The young women of this time introduced and accepted short dresses above the knee, low cut dresses with fringes, and they even cut their hair to be short as well. In the fashion “prior to the 1920s, it was a rare delicacy for man and boy to catch a glimpse of a feminine limb” Newspapers encountered this movement for females accordingly.
In June of 1922, an article was written that discussed how women were increasingly becoming more “revealing”. On the cover of this specific article, the message concludes that, “For the first time since civilization began the world is learning girls, women, females, maidens, and damsels have KNEES”. From all of this change in the 1920s, actress Clara Bow was the initial influence of flapper culture that spread and lead to the increasing change of the ideas and roles of women worldwide. Bow grew up as a girl from a poor family in New York.
She eventually landed her way in Hollywood and became one of the most famous actresses of the 1920s. Bow was known as the “Flapper-par-Excellence” early on in her career and she became the first “It girl” because of her flapper roles. Bow’s main roles as a flapper girl would be of a girl from the lower or lower-middle class. The roles would allow for the “average American girl to identify with her and to dream”, while being considered the “Bad girl”. Bow’s roles gave hope to millions of women by claiming that they could have fun and party without being rich or have a known last name.
David Stenn, in “Clara Bow, Runnin’ ‘Wild” states that “Instinctively Clara had grasped the essence of stardom: individuality. The girl who had spent hours imitating Mary Pickford sensed that to be special, she must be herself, and artistic credo that Clara maintained for the rest of her career”. Bow, when acting, was using a technique of being herself throughout her films and career. With her fame, Bow came to a conclusion that millions of young women wanted to be her. In “The New Movie Magazine” under the tab “The Salvation of Clara Bow” in December of 1930, Adela Rogers St.
John concludes her statement by saying, “I believe her (Clara) capable of reaching heights as an actress not yet reached by anyone in pictures. ” Supporters of Bow also claim that she was a woman whose “full cheeks and rounded body imply a soft heart and good natured liveliness devoid of all malice or ultrasophistication. ” Others believe that she was the “epitome of the flapper” while being lackadaisical as her overall image. Clara Bow through an overall perspective, both positive and negative, impacted the 1920s flapper culture and predominantly impacted the world as well.
Flapper culture was not just an American ideal, the idea was part of a much bigger picture called the Roaring Twenties. Even though flapper aspects have changed women forever since this time period and the image of flappers began in the United States’ Hollywood, many fashion gurus changed the look of women as well. This change specifically took place in Paris because of Bow’s influence rough her acting. The Parisian haute couture from 1919 to 1929 completely changed the way women dressed and the rall fashion boundaries between the sexes.
A French stylist named Paul Poiret “declared war’ on the corset” and he showed a “powerful reminder that in the world of fashion, no bigger design revolution has taken place. ” This fashion up rise can be seen on all of Bow’s magazine covers. On the cover of one of Screenland’s magazines from June of 1929, Clara Bow’s face is depicted with her red short hair and her feminine bow tie. On the cover it even states, “Clara Bow’s bathing suit for the best letter”. All throughout magazines, Bow defines the new revolution of fashion by wearing a feminine bow tie and small bikinis which was very out of the ordinary.
Bow’s influence is seen through both advertising and the movie industry by making “The flapper style- both in look and demeanor- reflected the exuberant, fast pace of modern America, with its mass production, mass marketing, and mass consumption. ” according to Daniel Delis Hill. verall these aspects of fashion led to what is known as feminism today. All of the changes in fashion started by the popularization of the flapper girl with her dress and lifestyle. That main flapper girl is Clara Bow.
Today’s society of culture, feminism, and women’s dressing was inspired by all of these events. Early on because of the “wide variability in the degree of public interest in women’s fashion was well exemplified in the ferment of popular discussion concerning the short skirts in the middle of the 1920s”, the flapper culture aspect of free spirit, in both clothing and occupation roles, turned into a change for women all the way up to today. Recently in 1999, an article was written about “It girls” in the United Kingdom where flapper trends had been going on for over 7 decades.
One of the current “It girls” was interviewed concerning her opinion on being an “It girl”. She answers with saying, “I hate the ‘It’ label but I’m associated with all that and I can’t get rid of it… There’s a time and a place for everything and I want to move on. The problem is, I’ve moved on, it’s just that others haven’t. ” Through this negative statement, it is proven flapper culture still prevails today. From the article, the author claims that the term “It girl” “was actually first coined in 1923 to describe the allure of the movie actress Clara Bow”.
Many may say that flapper girls were a negative sexual figure and that Hollywood was the center of sex, rape, drugs, and alcohol. Many still believe in the power of the original flapper girl, Clara Bow, and her impact of influencing the culture. Lastly, according to the book, “Dancing Fools and the Weary Blues: The Great Escape of the Twenties”, the authors establish a claim that the 1920s was classified as “a sort of myth, and the role of women in the twenties has become a myth too…
We have recreated an image of the 1920s from hints in movies, popular songs, tales of parents and grandparents, and from the softening effect of the backward, nostalgic look”. They also go on to say that the flappers always required a man to “save her”, but they displayed a new amount of energy within them. At the end, they conclude with saying that “Flappers were their youth, health, vigor, and energy. It was the commencement of the cult of youth, and the flapper established herself as independent and socially liberated, rebellious of established authority. Clara Bow and her empowerment as a flapper in both movies and her life influenced a maturity of early feminism, which led to the change of women worldwide to this day. Criterion C In the creation of this investigation, I began by looking at the topic of the exciting Roaring Twenties.
From that topic, I narrowed down to the idea of focusing in on the flapper culture that was created then. All of these ideas led to my research question, “How did Clara Bow influence the idea of flapper culture? Promptly, I began looking for credible sources that explained not only Clara Bow, but included information on the flapper culture as well. Prior to my research, I knew I would come across the problem of finding a historian with accurate information on Bow’s influence in her time. To prevent this problem, I found a search engine in search for primary and scholarly secondary sources. I came across a few and I included them in my investigation. I would look for my main information by looking up the words “Clara Bow”, “Flapper girls”, and “Flapper culture”.
Some limitations of the methods I used included not being able to fit in all of the evidence I had gathered and by having plenty of information found on only a limited number of perspectives. Personally, I felt like I had a true abundance of information, but it was not enough for some perspectives and more than enough for others. Overall, I was able to answer my research question far beyond my expectations. I came across the answer that intertwined today’s society and world with Clara Bow and the flapper girls/culture all in one investigation.
