Status Updates From Flapper: A Madcap Story of ...

Zeitz needs to go back and write like 10 more pages on Pepi Lederer who was Marianne Davies Niece? And got to romp around San Simeon with her lesbian Beaus and Louise Brooks…like this is the gay 1920s content this book is always circling around ( IE Pansy Craze, Queer Harlem Renaissance) but never delivers on in full

This section I was vibing with much more because not only does it place Louise Brooks in the pantheon of the Flapper as a political identity with cultural capital, she also just sounded fab. The construction of this book would have benefitted immensely from building up from Zelda to Lois Long to Clara Bow + Louise Brooks as divas living their lives and reflecting more abstract ideals about the New Woman = The Flapper

I appreciate Zeitz acknowledging both the racism inherent in the whitewashed marketing of the flapper identity as well as white cultural commentators saying blatantly racist things. It’s deranged that Lois Long thought she could say black women were bad at dancing to Jazz music and then basically double down white a black band leader clapped back at her

I am enjoying this fashion section even tho all the w lacing stuff has been debunked in the last four years. It is annoying to have a moral panic that flared between the 1830s and 1890s be treated as gospel truth instead of just misplaced misogyny and sexism by men making fun of women for following trends generally regardless of when tight lacing was in vogue or not

Ok but like was Lois Long a reference for Lois Lane because IRL she was a New Yorker Nightlife columnist that got into the hippest clubs, drank, fooled around and paired off with the New York comic panelist which is incredibly Chic

For a book about Womens growing identities in the form of the New Woman and Flapper, we are spending a lot of time talking about men writing about flappers and creating vibes based qualities for them. It made sense when it was F Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda because he was basically writing his wife into his stories and she was writing columns about how good the Roman A Clef stories about her were

This book is already giving me flashback to the Divorce Colony with women having to stand up in court in order to obtain any autonomy and annoying men talking down to them…patriarchy is a hell of a drug