Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

The 1920’s was a time for pleasure, consumption, sexuality, and individualism. Women were beginning to have shorter skirts and makeup that was once associated with prostitution. The older generation was often appalled to find their young girls dressing in such manners and experimenting with their sexuality. But the media said that this was okay. Films and ads were being produced to emphasize this exciting new change in society. High schools and colleges (thanks to coeducational universities) were now the perfect environment to help foster these new courtship rituals.

With new courtship rituals came new marriage rituals. It was becoming common to marry for love and companionship. The introduction of birth control made sex an act that could be committed between two people for pleasure without the risks that came with child bearing when one was not prepared for it. Women who wanted to have sex could do it because they enjoyed it and had an emotional tie to their partner not just in the case of wanting a child. This was putting a lot more pressure on women; pressure that they never had previously put on them before. They had the most to lose. Women were expected to go after the men, seeking out economical and social securities that was brought forth with a marriage. The life of a single woman was considered "unfulfilled."

The ideals of the norm where being shifted in this time period, that is, the norms for heterosexuals. Although sexual pleasure was being separated from procreation, such relationships between women were categorized as "deviant." Lesbians did not consider themselves any different than anyone else, and now they were being placed in a group and given a title by "experts." They were forced to figure out new ways of meeting each other, be it though literature, work, or female sports. Even with the new emphasis on self expression it was difficult to accept ones self for who they are in a society where who you are is not a part of the new social norm. 

( Evans, Sara M. "A Time of Devision." Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America. New York: Free, 1989. 175-196. Print.)