Walking in "flapper's" shoes...

My name is Coco, I'm 23 years old, I'm a single middle-class women from Granada, Spain. I'm a designer and actually I'm working in an important department store. Now my bosses have released they need women on the sales floor to make the most precious costomers come here, other women. But my life Isn't just work. By night, I engaged in the active city nightlife. I frequented jazz clubs and vaudeville shows. Speakeasies is a common destination to me and my friends. Ironically, more young women consume alcohol actually and it's illegal than ever before. Smoking, another activity previously reserved for men, is popular among flappers, as we are called. Talking about my friends, they are girls and some men who want to help us and make no difference between us. As we use to say, we have an unmistakable look. We wear dersses to the knee, cut and dyed hair, high heels, shirts and suits, like men. The flappers chose activities to please ourselves, not a father or husband. What is clear is that we always manage to have a good time.

Flappers

 

 1.Why did the role of (some) wome change in the twentis?

The battle for suffrage was finally over. After a 72-year struggle, women had won the precious right to vote. The generations of suffragists that had fought for so long proudly entered the political world. Carrie Chapman Catt carried the struggle into voting awareness with the founding of the League of Women Voters. Alice Paul vowed to fight until an Equal Rights Amendment was added to the Constitution. Margaret Sanger declared that female independence could be accomplished only with proper birth control methods. To their dismay, the daughters of this generation seemed uninterested in these grand causes. As the 1920s roared along, many young women of the age wanted to have fun.

      2.

  Advertisement for the Federal School of Commercial Designing (1917)

               AMBITIOUS GIRL! Better sign up now, because the boys are all going "Over There," and soon you'll have to support yourself. But don't worry: even a girl can earn as much as a man, by becoming a graphic designer.

 

A. What is it about?

  It's an advertisment for the Federal School of Commercial Designing on 1917. It talks about how girls could earn as much as a man, by becoming a graphic designer, a moder profesion, in which the only thing you need is to like drawing and want to work.

B. Do you agree with the sentence "even a girl can earn as much as a man"? Why?

  I agree with it because girls were before at home, looking after their kids and this was an oportutity to women to do what men do but, "even", I think this word shouldn't be there because it seem girls are less than the men, showing that if a girl can do what a man do, every one can do it, like if it were so easy, so easy as even a girl can do it.

C. Do you think women should support themselves? Why?

Yes, I think so, because we don't need to depend on men, we are able to live on our own and to do exactly the same activities and to earn the same money as a man.

Hoovervilles

As the Depression worsened and millions of urban and rural families lost their jobs and depleted their savings, they also lost their homes. Desperate for shelter, homeless citizens built shantytowns in and around cities across the nation. These camps came to be called Hoovervilles, after the president.

Hooverville shanties were constructed of cardboard, tar paper, glass, lumber, tin and whatever other materials people could salvage.

Unemployed masons used cast-off stone and bricks and in some cases built structures that stood 20 feet high. Most shanties, however, were distinctly less glamorous: Cardboard-box homes did not last long, and most dwellings were in a constant state of being rebuilt. Some homes were not buildings at all, but deep holes dug in the ground with makeshift roofs laid over them to keep out inclement weather. Some of the homeless found shelter inside empty conduits and water mains.

In addition to the term “Hooverville,” President Hoover’s name was used derisively in other ways during the Great Depression. For example, newspapers used to shield the homeless from the cold were called “Hoover blankets,” while empty pants pockets pulled inside out were “Hoover flags.” When soles wore out of shoes, the cardboard used to replace them was dubbed “Hoover leather,” and cars pulled by horses because gas was an unaffordable luxury were called “Hoover wagons.”

The Grapes of Wrath

In this novel, published on 1939, Tom Joad and his family are forced from their farm in the Depression-era Oklahoma Dust Bowl and set out for California along with thousands of others in search of jobs, land, and hope for a brighter future. The Grapes of Wrath is a story of human unity and love as well as the need for cooperative rather than individualistic ideals during hard times.

Written by: John Steinbeck

Conozcamos la India

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