In the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd, there were heavily contested debates about police reform. Sadly, those debates subsided after the trial and conviction of the police officer who was mainly responsible for Floyd’s death. However, after President Biden’s State of the Union address and the increase in mass shootings, there has been a resurgence in the dialogue concerning policing. While some advocates of defunding the police legitimately seek to abolish the police, most of them are using “defund” as a shorthand way of saying that some funds must be reallocated to social services and restorative justice initiatives. While the concept of social work as crime prevention is widely understood to date back to the late 19th century settlement house movement, it has also had some unexpected advocates. These include a number of flapper intelligentsia.
While flappers and intelligentsia are rarely mentioned in the same sentence, as the word flapper is normally associated with youthful (and stereotypically female) frivolity, that perception could and should be challenged. In contemporary society, one could substitute social media influencers for flappers.
Born out of the nadir of the First Wave of Feminism, flappers were a natural result of women earning certain social freedoms, including the right to vote, with the increase of leisure time and extended youth that came out of the Industrial Revolution. A well-known example of a flapper is Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. For movie-goers, either Mia Farrow’s (1974) or Carey Mulligan’s (2013) portrayal of her is an accurate stereotypical depiction of the flapper. The Great Gatsby’s other female protagonist, Jordan Baker, represents another often-overlooked feminist, the sporty flapper, which a contemporary magazine called Experience, aimed at an audience of flappers, also heavily reported and promoted. While flappers like Daisy would have been common, evidence suggests that some were wiser, more serious, and more interested in community solutions than their elders might give them credit for—the following is one small example of why.
Tucked within the pages of Experience is an article about police reform. Often referred by critics as a fashion magazine, in 1923 Experience published an article titled “Turn the Police into Social Workers.” The article’s author boldly declares in the opening lines: “Turn the Policeman into a philosopher! Replace the club with the admonishing finger! Make the star a symbol of protection rather than persecution!” Some may ask, “why would these flappers care about youth crime?” Who do you think some of these forces were targeting, but the brothers, boyfriends, and the everyday acquaintances of these “frivolous” flappers?