Mary Louise Brooks was an American film actress during the 1920s and 1930s. She is regarded today as an icon of the flapper culture, in part due to the bob hairstyle that she helped popularize during the prime of her career.
Brooks c. 1926
Brooks as a sophomore in high school, 1922. She had worn bobbed hair since childhood.
Brooks and Gregory Kelly in The Show-Off (1926)
Brooks and Gustav von Seyffertitz in The Canary Murder Case (1929)
Flappers were a subculture of young Western women prominent after the First World War and through the 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for prevailing codes of decent behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes in public, driving automobiles, treating sex in a casual manner, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms. As automobiles became more available, flappers gained freedom of movement and privacy.
Actress Louise Brooks (1927)
A flapper on board a ship (1929)
Violet Romer in a flapper dress c. 1915
An advertisement for the 1920 silent film comedy The Flapper, with Olive Thomas, before the look of the flapper had started to coalesce.