pIn the turbulent decades after World War I, both France and Germany sought to return to an idealized, prewar past. Many people believed they could recapture a sense of order and stability by reinstituting traditional gender roles, which the war had thrown off balance. While French and German women necessarily filled men's roles in factories and other jobs during the war, those who continued to lead active working lives after World War I risked being called modern women. Far from a compliment, this derogatory label encompassed everything society found threatening about women's new place in public life smoking, working women who preferred independence and sexual freedom to a traditional role in the home. Society felt threatened by the image of the modern woman, yet also realized that conceptions of femininity needed to accommodate the cultural changes brought about by the Great War.brIn Modernizing Tradition, Adam C. Stanley explores how interwar French and German popular culture used c