Posing a Threat: Flappers, Chorus Girls, and Other Brazen Performers of the American 1920s. By Angela J. Latham. Hanover, NH, and London: Wesleyan University Press, 2000; pp. 224. Illustrations, notes, and bibliography. $19.95 paperback.

Abstract

As women emerged from the constraints of whalebone corsets, trailing skirts, and woolen knickers into skirts that skimmed their ankles or even knees, socioeconomic and political forces were massing against this new physical freedom. The questions Posing a Threat asks are how did women test their newborn freedom through fashionable clothing choices — primarily bathing costumes — and what were the lasting consequences of these experiments? “Flappers” and chorus girls were the principle targets of self-proclaimed moralists and socially prominent spokesmen in the twenties. The emergence of the working-class woman and her fashion decisions created an amalgam of conflicting social, economic, and moral attitudes, and forced negotiations with the hegemonic dictators of acceptable female behavior.