Posing a Threat: Flappers, Chorus Girls, and Other Brazen Performers of the American 1920s

Abstract

"Posing a Threat: Flappers, Chorus Girls, and Other Brazen Performers of the American 1920s" by Angela J. Latham is reviewed.

Angela J. Latham. Posing a Threat: Flappers, Chorus Girls, and Other Brazen Performers of the American 1920s. Hanover, N. H.: Wesleyan University Press and University Press of New England, 2000. ix + 204 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-8195-6401-X (pb).

Setting the stage with the Roaring Twenties, Angela J. Latham explores the budding of women's sexual displays for entertainment value. Through an examination of performance, censorship and societal demand are pitted against one another to create a revolution in the realm of culture, especially in fashion, film, theatre, and revues. Latham uses multiple examples of "bathing beauties" and pageants, as well as numerous illustrations, to give her argument depth and historical familiarity. Through surveys of 1920s fashion trends and popular rhetoric, the momentum of censorship tactics and efforts is discussed as a surprising feat during the height of "leg shows," such as the Zeigfeld Follies. The final sections include an in-depth analysis of the censorship surrounding the production of Ladies' Night in a Turkish Bath. In exploring 1920s cultural values, Latham isolates specific moments in the emergence of the female body's iconic significance. Brooke L. Dean