Tag: Flappers

1971 Roaring Twenties Party Still Looks Like 1971

’71 Cactus

And if that doesn’t make you feel old enough, now we are actually in another set of Roaring 20s, or whatever adjective you’d like to choose. I’ve seen so many hundreds of yearbooks and thousands of pictures over the last 150 years, that it really chaps my hide when folks don’t even try to look era-specific. Don’t get me started on the mom’s hair in A Christmas Story.

Flappers had bobs. Not Crystal Gayle hair. Not Marcia Brady hair. Certainly not Chrissy Snow pigtails or a beehive. Sigh. Then again, it was just one night.

Barry’s Shine Parlor, July 1929

Houston Chronicle
Houston Chronicle

So much of this pre-Depression image is foreign to me. I’ve never worn a swimming cap in public. Actually, the woman near the eyeglasses display is wearing a cloche hat, designed to let the public know that her hair was bobbed in Flapper style and she was au courant. I bet she could Charleston in that dress like nobody’s business.

I’ve also never had my shoes shined. Up top, it advertises the service as free. Surely you’d have to be buying some of those Goodrich rubber heels to get the deal. And you’d need to tip.

“Pressing while you wait”–never done that, either. I’ll come back later, thanks. And along the far right side, it reads “Heyers Prickly Heat Powder.”

Have you ever applied prickly heat powder to your rash? Gotten your shoes shined? Bobbed your hair? Used Flapper terms like “bee’s knees” and “cat’s pajamas”? Lived through the summer of 1929, believing all was well, only to have the stock market crash three months later?

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