In Another Season: My Early Twenties
The Flap About the Flapper
The desire to create a magazine for women in St. Johns comes from somewhere deep within me, rooted in another season of my life.
In my early twenties, I was a graduate student at the University at Albany, earning my master’s degree in Women’s History. But my focus wasn’t political movements or suffragist milestones, though I studied the Seneca Falls Convention, the 19th Amendment, and the right to vote. What fascinated me most was not politics, but culture, how women expressed freedom and identity through art, fashion, attitude, and self-perception.
I became entranced by the early twentieth century: the 1910s and 1920s, an era when women began to see themselves differently. I spent hours scrolling through microfiche reels of Ladies’ Home Journal, Vogue, and Good Housekeeping, tracing the evolution of womanhood through their pages. I wrote research papers on the Gibson Girl aesthetic, on the Ballets Russes, the American expatriots who moved to Paris, and on the graceful neo-Greek silhouettes in fashion that liberated movement and expression.
The Flapper generation captured me completely. These women emerged from the shadow of World War I and the devastation of the influenza epidemic with an irrepressible desire to live fully. Their short bobbed hair, unstructured dresses, the jazz music, and the effortless swing of their step, all of it was a cultural revolution. The Flapper wasn’t just a style; she was a declaration that women’s lives were their own. When the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote in 1920, it merely formalized what culture had already decided: women were equals, ready to define life on their own terms.
My thesis, The Flap About the Flapper (1993), became a love letter to this cultural awakening, a moment when women stopped asking for permission and simply became.
Fast-forward a century later to 2025. When I look around our community, I see women who carry that same spirit, strong, stylish, and audaciously self-assured. They are CEOs, mothers, creators, visionaries, women who know their worth and wield it gracefully. These women inspired me to create St. Johns Woman Magazine: a space that celebrates local culture and connection while honoring the depth, intelligence, and style of modern womanhood.
I often wonder what historians will write about women today. My hope is that they’ll see how far we’ve come; not by mirroring men’s paths to power, but by forging our own. Today, women lead with intuition, empathy, and collaboration. We build empires while nurturing communities. We create impact through compassion.
Looking back, I can see the through-line: the graduate student writing about the cultural history of women, the young professional working for a female assemblywoman (a rarity in the 1990s), the mother finding connection in all-women’s groups, the entrepreneur building something of her own, and now, the publisher of a magazine dedicated to women’s voices.
Each season of life leads us gracefully to the next.