FLAPPER QUEENS, BEATS, MODS, AND PUNK HEROINES

Part 1

War, crises, and economic recovery may pose challenges to established social norms and bring about groups that defy conventions and live by their own norms. These groups create what is generally called—albeit a much debated term—a counterculture. Throughout time, history has seen many countercultures. In this post I will discuss about past countercultures in the US and the UK, particularly the flappers, Beats, mods, hippies, and punks, and look at the contexts in which they emerged from and its influence on gender. This post is written in two parts. The first looks at the periods of flappers, Beats, and mods; the second looks at the era which gave rise to the hippie and punk countercultures.

The Flappers

The flapper culture in the US only survived for a brief period. Even with its lack of philosophical depth, flappers caused a major controversy during their time. From a moralist point of view, flappers were seen as women with loose morals and a sign of a collapsing middle-class morality. On the other hand, some see the flapper period as a sexual revolution—however brief—where urban middle-class women gained economic independence and turned against existing norms. On their own terms, these women lived the rebellious life that they desired.

A flapper posing after a drive (pinterest)

The late 1920s was when the flappers became well-known, but the term has been used since the early 1900s. The flappers were born out of the conditions brought about by the First World War. During the War, women were taken out of their homes to work in the frontline or to replace men in their jobs. This gave the justification for women to leave their homes, secure economic roles, and become independent. Even when women were geared back towards the home after the war, some women continued to work. It seemed that traditional moral values have been somewhat affected by the War and many young-single women in the cities began to lead independent lives rather than submitting to marriage. As a result of the War, there were more women than men. This fact greatly contributed to women’s decision to postpone marriage as there were not enough men available anyway. Moreover, the suffragist movement which had gained strength at the time, also contributed to the changing perception of women’s role.

Hence the flapper queens established themselves. Young and independent women, mostly single, determined, smart, and wild—rebelling against the conventional passive and chaste female image. These women can easily be identified by their short bobbed hair and shorter, loose dresses—they refused to be constrained in corsets. Flapper women benefited from this era of rapid progress in automation and electrical products, they drove their own cars, smoked, drank, loved coffee, and went café hopping and hanged out in speakeasies until the morning light. Flappers also enjoyed cultural pluralism. On their night outs they listened to jazz and danced the Charleston, cultures which have their roots in the African-American communities. Some perceived flapper women as simply hedonistic creatures, while some respect them for being well-informed in politics and the arts.

Flappers were considered promiscuous for their time because they did not fear scandalous relationships. It can be argued that flappers sparked a sexual revolution way before the term “sexual revolution” even existed. But even after causing intense public controversy, the flapper lifestyle—which extended to the arts, literature, and films—grabbed so much media attention that it became more and more ordinary and less unconventional. Nevertheless, the fall of the economy in the 1930s and the Great Depression turned all this freedom a few women had into a mere momentary sensation—they lost it as quickly as they gained it. The Depression ended the flapper culture and the following periods to come simply chose to forget much of the flappers’ earlier gains.

The Beats

Following the postwar economic boom and population expansion of the 1950s, newly married US middle-class couples were moving from the overcrowded city space into new housing areas in the suburbs. A new image of the happy white middle-class family emerged along with new efficient home appliances and weekend shopping activities. All this gave rise to a consumer culture and at the same time strengthened the male breadwinner and domestic wife gender role. In the face of postwar disillusionment, tradition and conformity became the norm. It was against this setting that the Beats counterculture movement was born.

Café Wha in New York, where the Beats used to meet (Pinterest)

The Beats were born during the Great Depression. Like flappers, the Beats (from the phrase beaten down) came out of a postwar generation which became critical of traditional morality. The Beats were from an academia and middle-class background, but instead of embracing the establishment, they went against it and rejected the materialistic and secure life that it offered them.

The Beats were revolutionary in the sense that they changed conventional ways of writing and expression. The Beats replaced the traditional structure of poetry with disjointed and free verses and literature with spontaneous and expressive language. They also had the fearlessness to confront taboo subjects, such as sexuality.

These changes also constituted changes in lifestyles and values. The Beats lived a Bohemian lifestyle in parts of the city, mainly in East Village, New York and later San Francisco. A nonmaterialistic world view, a nonconformist attitude, Eastern spirituality, jazz underground music, and experimentation with drugs were important elements of this lifestyle. Furthermore, they supported sexual freedom and homosexuality. Coffee houses became the regular places where the Beat founders have their intellectual discussions, poetry readings, and book discussions. 

As much as the Beats appear to offer a kind of sexual revolution—women—however, were onlookers who were excluded from serious intellectual and artistic exchange; at best they were there to be available to the men. Nevertheless, it would be unfair to generalize. Yes, they were prominent female Beat figures, but it is commonly observed that women did not play a pivotal role in the Beats’ “boy’s club movement”. As confirmed in the memoir of one female Beat, Joyce Johnson, the Beat literary movement with its male founding members—Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs—had “a very masculine aesthetic.”

There is the view that women were not intentionally left out, but that there was a lack of female writers and poets at the time, especially good ones. Even if we were to buy this explanation, it must be noted that this was a period where women were expected to submit to the role of housewife and mother. This was the age of conformity. Women who simply could not conform were seen as having some kind of disturbance and were taken to mental institutions—electric shock being a common treatment. Thus, this condition laid the obstacles for women’s substantial participation and inclusion in the Beat movement. 

So, it is not surprising that women who had a high profile in Beat circles were those who had personal connections with their male peers/lovers and who held supportive roles. A number of these women, such as Hetti Jones and Diane Di Prima, organized the publication and distribution of the work of their male Beat partners. As established publishing houses were not interested in printing Beat work due to their lack of commercial value, the Beats had to develop ways and a DIY attitude to get their work out there.

Some Beat women, such as Jones and Johnson took on the role of breadwinner so that their Beat man can focus on his artistic career. So they sacrificed their own creative potential for the men in their lives. However, some did write in their own right, such as Di Prima, Joyce Johnson, and Joanne Kyger. 

Beat literary style was influential on the emerging pop culture of the late 1950s and 1960s, which was predominantly masculine. Bands like the Beatles as well as a number of 1960s folk-rock song writers such as Bob Dylan acknowledged the Beats’ influence on their music. With their influence expanding to pop culture, Beat hat, black leotard, and coffee house book reading became stereotypes which later were commercialized, exploited, and turned into a mere fad by the media through the phrase “Beatnik”. Ironically, the Beat became part of the mainstream culture they were against in the first place.

The Mods

Shortly after the Beats became the buzzword of the US, in the UK, a new urban youth culture called the mod (from the word modern, because these youths were into modern jazz) was grabbing media attention. The mods would cruise around the city on their scooters and hang out in coffee houses, listening to jazz and ska out of the juke box until the morning light. Some say mod came out as an influence of the Beatnik fad. But unlike the Beats, the mods started from working-class communities, who because of better economic conditions and job opportunities after the Second World War, were able to live a somewhat consumptive lifestyle of fashion and clubbing. 

We are the mods (Pinterest)

Like the Beatniks, the mods had a distinct taste for clothes, but they were very fashion conscious. While the Beats’ attire was more laid back, the mods who were influenced by French and Italian art films, wore tight suits and pointed shoes. Buying clothes was an important part of their lifestyle and they did this using most of their wage.

Women were quite visible in the mod culture. As working women, their economic independence allowed them to participate in the mod lifestyle. In fact, the mods altered gender roles—English men do not normally shop, but mod men do their own shopping. As with the flappers, independent mod women rode through the night; looking stylish on their scooters while wearing masculine leather jackets—sporting androgynous fashion. 

At a glance, the mod lifestyle may appear to have no political relevance. But it was a political statement in itself, a rebellion against the conventional postwar English life of hard work and conformity. 

The music scene of the early ‘60s also promoted the mod culture. Performers such as The Who, the Small Faces, and David Bowie sported the mod style (while female musicians were almost nonexistent). At this point, not surprisingly, top designers saw the potential of the mods as consumers. It did not take that long until the fashion industry exploited the mod fad. Model Twiggy’s tomboy posture represented the mod look and altered previous standards of beauty. While women became more independent beings, they were turned into objects of the industry. The mod became so commercialized that it became mainstream and lost its edge.

David Bowie during his mod days (Pinterest)

During the hippie generation, the mods became less visible, but mod fashion and music associated with mods experienced a series of revivals, especially in the ‘80s. Instead of being too fashion conscious, the mods of this era took a lot more interest in social and political issues.

From Nonconformity to Mainstream

Flappers, Beats, and mods started as a form of resistance against conformity. Their discontent with postwar values affected how they saw traditional morality. Economic prosperity instigated a new sense of freedom and need for a new moral code and lifestyle; however, this resistance soon lost to mainstream co-optation.

The flapper culture altered norms on sexuality and gender. Flapper image and style became so widespread and influenced films, fashion, and art that amidst all the controversy surrounding the flapper trend, it grew mainstream and lost its meaning. This appears to be similar to what the other countercultures experienced. 

The Beat image through the beatnik fad ended up becoming a commodity for middle-class consumption—everything the Beats stood against. Despite its nonconformist stance, the Beats lack interest in fundamentally challenging the gender norm of their time. Patriarchal features which excludes most women and treats female peers as object of desire remained a part of the Beat movement. 

On the other hand, women were more visible in the mod youth culture. But the mod style was soon co-opted by the media and fashion industry and became part of popular culture—losing its working-class essence and the significant role women had. It later intertwined with other cultures, such as the hippie counterculture, which I will discuss in the second part of this post.

FLAPPER QUEENS, BEATS, MODS, AND PUNK HEROINES

Part 2

Sources

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DISEMPOWERING WOMEN IN THE COLONIES: The Victorian Regime and Colonial Expansion

During the Victorian Era, under the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), the British Empire was at its peak of power. Along with other European countries, it had secured colonial expansion in different parts of the globe. These nations did not only build economic empires through their colonies but they also enforced moral and cultural values which affected gender, ethnic, and class relations in the colonies.

The Victorian Era was an era of ambivalence. Full of contradictions. It was an era of progress in the sciences and technology brought about by the Industrial Revolution; however, women were seen as naturally inferior to men. In the British homeland, it was an era of strong patriarchal control under the rule of a queen, where women had few rights. The era gave birth to the wealthy male industrious middle class. Middle- and upper-class women were domesticated while poor women worked in factories and the mines, or in the sex trade. Social mobility was most unstable, making it easier for the hard working middle-class to move up the ladder and for the nobles to slide down. Puritan values were the dominant code amidst a growing sex industry. At the same time, it saw the emergence of social movements that failed to achieve much, but would pave the way for major social changes in the following decade, including in the colonies.

This post looks at how the Victorian regime domesticated women in Europe and in turn disempowered women in the colonies through the development of the Western patriarchal family model.

Nineteenth Century Europe

Queen Victoria by John Calcott Horsley

Nineteenth century Europe saw the historic socioeconomic changes which emerged out of the Industrial Revolution and what would create the wealthy middle class. Increased scale of the industry, overseas trading, and the expansion of the empires all contributed to the growth of the commerce and transportation sectors. As a result, vast demands for human resources as well as new businesses in cities and towns gave way to the emergence of a new group of people called the “middle class”. The middle class was associated with modernity, economic growth, and urbanization.

Not surprisingly, the middle class’ economic expansion enabled this group to secure its interests in the political agenda of the time. The principle that it is hard work and merit—and not privilege—which raise an individual’s position in society challenged the power of the aristocracy and brought about a number of reforms in favor of the middle class.

Before the rise of the middle class, women provided an important contribution to the economy of the family by being involved in the family business. Prior to industrialization, many European women worked in the agricultural sector.

As new wealth emerged with the middle class, values about morality, work ethics, and gender upheld by this group quickly became dominant. The Victorian Age in particular saw the rise of puritan values. Discipline and productivity founded the principles of social and moral conduct.

The middle class of nineteenth century Europe exerted a particular set of values about the home and the public sphere. The wife should provide the industrious male with the emotional environment required for his happiness after a hard day’s work. The household was the center of European women’s life and the public sphere belonged to men. Only poor women worked outside the home and many worked in the factories.

Middle-class women of this century had access to education, but they were encouraged to learn only a number of subjects viewed appropriate for women’s domestic life. Lower-class women worked and had a degree of economic independence; however, they were in low-waged jobs.

In the ideal Victorian family, the father is the head of the household. A woman will lose her ownership of property to her husband upon marriage and she would be legally represented by her husband.

The clear line dividing the genders brought about a significant change in the status of women in nineteenth century European middle-class families. Their reduced economic role affected their wealth as well as their social and legal status.

These middle-class values and sexual division of labor were transferred to the colonies as capitalist economic structures and the patriarchal family model were established there.

Colonialism and the Disempowerment of Women

European colonial expansion had a number of objectives: economic profit; exploration and discovery of new land; scientific interest; religious mission and ideological motives; and territorial, political, and military expansion of power. After the Industrial Revolution and Europe’s new commerce, new needs for raw materials and desire for wealth developed. As a consequence, aggressive expansion polices were pursued.

Simon Willem Maris, 1890s

As objectives were not limited to economic and political power, there were moral, cultural, and ideological justification of why structural changes should be imposed on the colonies. Missionaries saw that it was their moral duty to turn the natives into “civilized Christians”. Furthermore, notions of white supremacy justified western culture as being superior. Economic, bureaucratic, and political institutional arrangements were set up in the colonies, to some extent, to mirror those in the colonial homeland. By the nineteenth century, the patriarchal family model were imposed upon the colonies.

The exercise of puritan morality amidst industrialization and the urbanizing of the colonies also took place just as it did in Europe. Hard work and upward mobility as well as the transformation of the family structure to the patriarchal form were justified by this morality.

During the vast development of the modern industry in the colonies in the 1870s, native women’s important involvement in the labor sector was significantly reduced with the utilization of modern machines. The absorption of male labor increased, while most work available to women were in domestic settings. Industrialization and bureaucratization under foreign ideologies expanded the male sphere and domesticated women through their exclusion from the public domain. Workplaces had the European pattern of male domination and working women received lower wages than men. When elite native women had access to education, they were restricted by moral values about being devoted mothers and homemakers.

As notions of modernity were equated with progress and the West, colonial regimes altered customary practices to fit with Western ways of doing things. European imperialists as well as indigenous nationalists established patriarchal models of ruling.  As a result, it undermined native women’s participation in decision-making in familial and community affairs.

The patriarchal model furthermore reduced native women’s access to ownership of property. In matrilineal West Sumatra, for example, attempts to combine adat with the Dutch concept of ownership, in addition to economic changes and an increasingly hierarchical and centralized political system, weakened the authority of senior women over traditional forms of land ownership.

In parts of Africa under a patrilineal system, the few rights native women had to land were further weakened by colonial intervention which imposed policies that privileged male landholders.

Women in the colonies were deprived of most of their rights due to property rights that followed European legal forms of ownership and favored native men. With lack of property rights and reduced access to labor participation, native women gradually lost their wealth and became dependent on the patriarchal marriage and family model.

Segregation

Racial segregation policies which were enforced through spatial arrangements, further disempowered the natives and, in fact, continued to cause ethnic tensions after independence. Europeans settled in the center of the cities and the native people were placed outside the cities, while other non-Europeans, such as the Arabs, Chinese, and Indians were usually positioned in areas closer to center. This was the case in the Dutch East Indies or colonial Indonesia. The British Empire in India on the other hand, adopted a caste organization into its administration which provided privileges to the upper-caste.

Anton Ebert

Segregation polices served cultural, political, and economic purposes. They differentiated the ruler from the ruled and enforced domination and subordination. They strengthened cultural domination through its architecture, tradition, and life style. They were a mechanism to secure social control as well as economic access to a limited elite. In terms of gender and race intersection, if native men were labeled as inferior, native women were seen as even more inferior.

European women in the colonies were also somewhat confined by these segregation practices. European women who followed their husband or family to the colonies lived an exclusive life and was mostly isolated from other non-Europeans, except for their servants and other helpers. However, this arrangement resulted in European women exercising power over the domestic helpers and having a source of power they may not be able to possess back home.

Women’s Rights

Even with the segregation of European women from the native people in general, these women were able to develop relations with some of the elite native women, who also faced cultural constraints. Although motherhood and domesticity were what was considered suitable for the elite women of both sides, this connection had provided a channel for communicating new values that promised women more freedom. The end of the Victorian Era saw the rise of middle-class social movements supporting women’s rights. Contact between these European women and elite native women may have also been instrumental in further spreading ideas on women’s rights—or what some call Western feminism—in the colonies and fostering change.

Although there is a general perception that the spread of Western values gave way to changes in native women’s poor socioeconomic condition in the colonized countries, on the contrary, studies have claimed that native women in the colonies in fact experienced more gender equality than their Western sisters. In general, native women of the less-privileged class had relatively more rights and wealth during the pre-colonial period and prior to the Industrial Revolution than nineteenth century European women. New socioeconomic structures imposed on the colonies affected gender relations and largely disempowered native women.

References

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