A Flapper's Appeal To Parents (1922)

This article has been passed around the Internet quite a bit already, but here is my reading of it. From "The Outlook," Dec. 6, 1922.

[@The1920sChannel]

Note that "make love" in this article does not mean what you think it means

[@larrypatterson5363]

Not sure what you mean there… It still refers to the act of sexual intercourse.

[@rburns8083]

@@larrypatterson5363 but it didn't in the 1920s. Back then it just meany kissing, canoodling, and courting.

[@neville132bbk]

@@larrypatterson5363 I have read the expression in a story book aimed at young teens from around the same time..it simply meant to be affectionate, or ..light flirting.... so far as made sense in the context...certainly not what it means in 2022

[@robkunkel8833]

@@larrypatterson5363 … sorry but NO! Make love in context does not mean that. I can tell you that from a generation much closer than most, if not all the commenters.

[@Vortigan07]

@@larrypatterson5363 Might seem like a flippant reference but in one of the Laurel and Hardy shorts, there's a storyline where they're attempting to help a woman to regain the affections of her husband by making him jealous. Oliver is enlisted to act as her pursuing lover after Stan recounts the tale of a similar woman who solved the problem in the same way after she "got a fella to make love to her in front of her husband" . That was in 1935, they most certainly wouldn't have used or got away with using that reference had it carried the same meaning as it now does.

[@poetryjones7946]

Just think - the Flapper’s “older generation “ were people from the Edwardian and VICTORIAN eras!

[@byzcath]

It reminds us that the friction between the youth and their elders is eternal. I am sure that what our Flapper is saying has been echoed in her past as well as her future. I wonder if she ever had children, and how she dealt with being the adult to her generation's youth.

[@forumquorum8156]

well that was 20s, and at the end of that was the depression, my guess is she married and had kids just to find someone to help her not starve and to stay alive

[@theuglybiker]

Her kids probably listened to that demon Rock-n-Roll.

[@robkunkel8833]

@@theuglybiker … Her kids may have been old enough to be demonizing rock and roll. Her kid’s generation would have been in their 30s, just old enough to be like Marty’s father in “Back To The Future.” A Frank Sinatra loving age group that went to Vegas to see the shows, like Wayne Newton.

[@valentinius62]

Her children would most likely have been into Swing. Grandchildren, the Beatles. Very much still a "car culture", and music still dominated by blues and jazz through at least the ascendancy if Rap. Can't think of too much she would get upset about with kids from the 1930s through the mid 1960s. She might maybe have had issues with late 1960s grand children if they were really into the drug scene. But I can't see a Flapper being overly judgmental of younger generations, unless she realized later on that she was a little too much on the wild side herself when she was younger.

[@derekroberts6654]

the 60s were the repeat of the 20s… but on steroids…. i’m wondering now if most baby boomers were getting along and connected better with their grandparents than thier parents…

[@JackClayton123]

Not sure if it a fair comparison. I’ve always thought the 20’s where the 60’s on steroids. Hard to tell, as I wasn’t around then, whereas for the 60’s, many of us were witness to it.

[@catherinecrow5662]

Absolutely My Grandfather... one of those Jazz Musicians & my Grandmother, a gorgeous, literate Suffragette. Both born about the turn of the 19th to 20th Century

[@marknoahsotelo316]

There does seem to be a lot of similarities. I guess the depression and the war kept a lot of social change from happening

[@robkunkel8833]

For this baby boomer, I did not connect with my grandparents because they were always stodgy. They worked hard for a living and my grandmother did not get a high school degree until she was in her 50s. My parents were able to live a charmed life in the 30s & 40s and my mother was more like a flapper. My dad was even crazier. They used to party with a group of yacht club bisexual advertising people. It was an adventure growing up this way in Chicago 50s &. 60s.

[@forumquorum8156]

@@robkunkel8833 stodgy huh? sounds like your parents were like the 60s aholes who had a privileged life compared to the hard workers before them, and they lived their lives of self aborption, selfishnes and decadence, just like the jerk baby boomers, who btw, are the ones that brought about the consumerism and greed that we are dealing with today, they were so PROUD to work on eroding family, community, parish, religion, patriotism, and filled that space with...nothing.. but consumerism and greed. When i think baby boomers, i think selfishness and foolishness, but mainly hypocrisy.

[@AngieIsHere]

I love this channel

[@treystephens6166]

It looks that my hopes of the 1920s fashion returning in the 2020s won’t come true.

[@robkunkel8833]

Ban the Bra!

[@meekinheritor2171]

That was one wise flapper! She speaks timelessly for all youth everywhere.

[@lesabri]

Make love meant something else at this time?

[@mccloaker]

It absolutely did. It originally meant 'Show affection' like hug and talk to. Around the 60s they started saying it while wiggling their eyebrows knowingly. By the 70s it just meant sex.

[@kissthesky40]

@@mccloaker Thanks Jeremy.

[@poetryjones7946]

Yeah - that line freaked me out at first 😹

[@valentinius62]

Rather like Hippies. Few were super into it and lived in communes. Most just liked having long hair, the easy availability of drugs, the music, and the "free love".

[@klimekco.4577]

This is absolutely dynamic. And absolutely timeless. With a few minor alterations this could be a letter from every generation to its former.

[@jourwalis-8875]

"We are in touch with the whole universe"! Fantastic prediction or sense of the Internet 100 years ago!

[@samderrick]

"Jazz has become modified, and probably will continue to be until it has become obsolete." Holy crap, what a prophet. I feel like jazz evolving into Bebop was the death of jazz in the mainstream. What a remarkably accurate prediction.

[@BaronessErsatz]

Long live jazz!!!!!

[@houseofvanity8]

A little flapper party never killed nobody 💯🥰

[@TheMaxx111]

So then a little flapper party always killed somebody???

[@kesmarn]

@@TheMaxx111 It depended... On whether or not you were Mr. Arbuckle's girlfriend.

[@rburns8083]

@@kesmarn He was innocent! #FattyWasFramed #Justice4Fatty

[@alandesouzacruz5124]

Louis Armstrong 🎺 early years in 1920s my sugestion

[@John.thedoc]

Plus ca change, le plus c'est la meme chose!

[@Christina_Paz]

Millennial here... and I agree with her sentiments!

[@SomeRandomOldFatGuy]

Brilliant

[@robkunkel8833]

1:13 I don’t pet. “Petting” was like getting the first base, if love making is compared to a ball game.

[@michaelmcgee8543]

It sounds like it's coming from F Scott Fitzgerald.

[@auroramacula]

it's coming from young ellen though. i sure hope fitz won't plagiarize again :)

[@Booka60]

The need for all that high toned thought and understanding is relative today too. I doubt they got it back then though, because of where they ended up a decade later, back on the footpad of another war.

[@p.o694]

I guess its hard for us to imagine it being scandalous, but for what the 1900s seemed to before ww1, what the 20s were DEFINETLY were immoral to the prev gen

[@starcrib]

Excellent / So Well Written: Every other generation is always the Extinction Level Events. ☄️.. "THE MIGHTY TIDE OF CIVILIZATION". !!!

[@peterxyz3541]

Listening to this essay, watching this vid, I had this profound insight: Half the screen could be 1920s iconography. The other half would be modern iconography just to show how similar we are & how far we came to be similar to our past.

[@daguard411]

Thanks!

[@7sOoOnE507]

😍😍😍

[@beerye9331]

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may... in 7 short years, after all the credit is maxed, this will become a moot point as folks stand in soup lines.

[@TheMan40262]

the early stages of american hedonism

[@chrismusix5669]

I've always thought so. But this speech seems to make Flapperism a noble endeavour. I'm not sure exactly what the Flappers were doing to improve society though. Female empowerment? Independence? What was it?

[@playwithmeinsecondlife6129]

Same as now.

[@unluckycloverfield4316]

The intro of this letter reads so much like a tumblr my flapper identity is valid post I love it.

[@annabethkvenvolden7086]

Fun fact: I wore a flapper dress to my prom last spring! 🥰

[@silversurfer3202]

Then along came the great awakening..... The Stock Market crash of 1929 followed by the Great Depression.......(how'd Flapping through that work out for you?)😒...I guess it became a time to grow up and face reality

[@lesabri]

Silver Surfer, that's not groovy!

[@silversurfer3202]

@@lesabri Every Generation has it's "Young, Dumb and Full of Come" phase 😝😆....Look at what's happening today; GenX'ers, LGBTQ+, Socialist Woke Leftist political Policies and Agendas 😲!!! (This too shall pass🤔). Hopefully!!!😝!!!!

[@kissthesky40]

Okay boomer.

[@MWhaleK]

They embraced socialism and dug out from under all that.

[@Tamminator2000]

You must be fun at parties.

[@jonwashburn7999]

Very interesting.

[@cecillebarone9252]

I don't agree There were few charles manson type a'holes and if there were,they went to the electric chair People in the 1920's had class

[@davidanspach1624]

That isn't true at all if anything there were far more of them owing to insufficient police capabilities -- Albert Fish and Charles Panzram come to mind. And Charles Manson almost never got away with the shit he pulled, including what is he was most infamous for.

[@starcrib]

What a hillbilly comment 🐿💨

[@kesmarn]

@@davidanspach1624 DNA and the ability to track people using GPS technology have made it harder to evade arrest I think. Now getting a conviction? That tends to depend on who you are...

[@cecillebarone9252]

@@davidanspach1624 more of them "fried" in the old days or went to the guillotine(last used in 1977) there were cosequences to evil

[@cecillebarone9252]

All those bitches that ran with charlie lived to old age whilst sharon tate and those others were shown no mercy

[@alankovacik1928]

a flapper didn't write this, nice essay though.

[@auroramacula]

why not?

[@johnnyangel64]

So many youth today don't believe in God because of their 'parent', and the pledge of allegiance is no longer said in school today because the words might offend someone. Too bad, being offended IS NOT A SKILL!

[@kandigloss6438]

that has absolutely nothing to do with the content of this video.

[@robkunkel8833]

And John, your lovely Pledge of Allegiance is still being said, complete with the Christian Jesus-God reference put into it by the Segregationist Senators back in the 50s.