By Emily Cronin
Tea And Carpets
Originally published March 9, 2009
The "It" girls of the 1920s -- the Flappers -- did a lot to usher in the modern age.
They were the first to stop wearing the waist-constricting corsets that gave so many women before them the look of walking -- and fainting -- hourglasses.
They danced wild dances -- the Charleston and the Bunny Hug -- to ragtime and jazz taken from the previously ignored culture of Black America.
And they cut their hair short and smoked and drank like men, presaging the days when women would join the workforce and become financially as well as socially independent.