1920s--The Roaring Twenties, also know as The Jazz Age introduces a new era of permissiveness. Women become more daring. They cut their hair short, expose their arms and legs, and smoke cigarettes in public. There is nudity on film.
   1920s--The German Adolf Koch organizes choreographed nude exercise and dance classes. He advances the theory that forcing women to wear tops is a symbolic way to lower her social status.
   1920s--Sadomasochistic fantasy literature explodes. It includes novels, paintings, and photographs.
   1920s--Chicago department store Marshall Field's refuses to employ women with hair cut above the shoulder.
   1920s--California swimsuit companies advance the maillot. Catalina introduces the Chicken Suit and the Speed Suit, with open armholes and a shorter legline. Jantzen counters with the Molded Fit maillot.
   1920s--Albert Cheney Johnston photographs most of the Ziegfeld Follies dancers nude or semi-nude, continuing a record of future movie stars that includes Gloria Swanson, Louise Brooks, Norma Shearer and many others.
   1920--The first nude beach in Germany is established on the island of Sylt.
   1920--The Kotex sanitary pad is introduced.
   1921-- The American morality play Ten Nights in a Bar-Room becomes the longest running play in American history and is even eventually made into a movie.
   1921--The first Miss America contest is held at Atlantic City, New Jersey. Margaret Gorman wins and is the first Miss America. Many of the contestants violate a local law prohibiting the display of nude limbs by rolling their stockings down to show their knees to the judges.
   1921--Betty Blythe rocks to stardom in The Queen of Sheba. She wears 28 different costumes and remarks that if she were to wear them all at once, she still couldn't keep warm.
   1921--American performer Mae West introduces the detachable shoulder strap.
   1922--Skirts drop back down to the ankle.
   1922--The Catholic Church discontinues its practice of employing singing castrati in the Vatican.
   1922--The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America organization is created by Will Hays, who believes censorship of the movie is in the public interest.
   1922--Gilda Gray performs "It's Getting Dark on Broadway" at the Ziegfeld Follies. The double entendre alludes to racial mixing.
   1922--American photographer Edwin Bower Hesser creates Arts Monthly Pictorial, a monthly magazine featuring shots of semi-nude showgirls in artistic poses.
   1923--Broadway producers the Shubert Brothers introduce the first topless dancers on Broadway, with their Artists and Models reviews. Topless showgirls had appears on Broadway before, but they never moved. George White and Earl Carroll's Vanities also undress their girls.
   1923--Minsky installs a burlesque runway that extends out into the audience in his New York theater. This allows closer contact with the performers, and encourages stars to perform bare-legged.
   1923--Alla Nazimova brings Oscar Wilde's Salome to the silver screen, continuing a long-running theater tradition.
   1923--The Rialto Theater in Chicago introduce the practice of displaying nude pictures of its performers in the the lobby.
   1923--Eric von Stroheim brings nudity and S&M to Hollywood. In Greed (1923). his star ZaSu Pitts gets into bed naked and is caressed with gold coins.
   1923--Carrie Finnell is one of several who claim to invent striptease. Finnell is a burlesque performer dancing both throughout the midwest circuit as well as at Minskys' in New York. Appearing at the Empire Theater in Cleveland, she promises to take off one more piece of clothing for each extra week her act runs. Striptease is born.
   1924--Acetate, made from acetylated cellulose, is the second synthetic fiber to be mass produced in the United States.
   1924--The state of Nevada employs a gas chamber and cyanide gas to execute Gee Jon, convicted of murder.
   1924--A nobody Joan Crawford begins her career as a nude dancer for explicit peep show films.
   1925--Isabelle Van, "The Queen of the Runway," who develops a teaser routine which involves removing one piece of clothing each act until she wears only a union suit. The tease act is different from the striptease act in which the performer removes all of their clothes in a continuous act. One of Van's trademarks is the "take off" or breast flash at the conclusion of the act.
   1925--U.S. Rubber introduces the first elastic textile, Lastex, which is introduced into foundation garments and swimwear.
   1925--Dresses continue to rise until baring the calf. They come to rest just below the knee, which remains forbidden from view.
   1925--Clara Bow show the tops of her stockings in the movie Mantrap. In other scenes she wears a bathing suit, lingerie, bares midriff, and appears in other states of dishabille. Nudes of her taken when she was starting out create a scandal.
   1925--Actress Louise Brooks sues photographer John De Mirjian to stop publication of risque nudes taken of her two years previously. Brooks claims nude publicity shoots are a price all new performers on Broadway must pay, but that she is past this phase of her career.
   1925--John Scopes is convicted of teaching evolution in a Tennessee schoolroom.
   1925--Eric von Stroheim presents a all-female nude orchestra in The Merry Widow, and orgies are shot on closed sets.
   1925--American magazines begin publishing bare breasts, many in the guise of photo instruction. Titles include Art Group Quarterly, Artists and Models, Art Lovers, and La Boheme Art Quarterly.
   1925--Josephine Baker stars in Revue Negre in Paris, and wears only bananas and a g-string for the big dance number.