This book makes an important contribution to the growing scholarship on the interwar years in Argentina. Cecilia Tossounian analyzes different representations of what was then labeled “la joven moderna,” young, trendy, and liberated women in different spaces who defied traditional social conventions. Tossounian effectively displays how gender, popular culture, and consumption were at the center of social, political, and cultural debates on Argentine national identity from the 1920s to the early 1940s. The book's theoretical framing engages the scholarship on gender, popular culture, and consumption in the creation and circulation of practices and images on female identity. Female identity, “embraced and debated through the language of cultural consumption,” (9) must be understood within a transnational framework of circulation of products and ideas of modernity that created unique versions of the Argentine modern young woman. Methodologically, the book is based on a variety of sources related to the production and consumption of popular culture, including women's illustrated magazines, daily newspapers, advertisements, movies, pulp fiction, radio programs, and songs that articulated representations and messages about gender expectations.

The book is organized in five chapters in addition to an introduction and an epilogue. After a first chapter explaining the transformations of Argentina in the interwar period, each of the following four chapters analyzes different types of “la joven moderna” that appeared in those years: the flapper, the archetypical upper-class and fashionable modern girl; pink-collar female workers; female athletes; and beauty contestants. Tossounian skillfully shows how women in each of these categories defied traditional gender conventions and experienced more opportunities in a context shaped by the new consumer culture and socioeconomic change. At the same time, and as their representations circulated in popular culture, they elicited both admiration and concern about the role of women in society, national identity, and the place of Argentina in the international context. Thus, the flapper could be both admired as a symbol of cosmopolitan modernity and progress, and reviled for her shallowness and consumerism.

The book pays careful attention to the intersection of gender, class, and race. Young women in the service sector, who participated as both subjects and objects in popular consumer culture, experienced more social and labor opportunities, while they generated concerns about proper gender relations in the public and domestic spheres. Moreover, the exploration of female athletes and beauty contestants shows how young women could be presented and represented in terms of a white, modern Argentina. In the end, though, there were clear boundaries to the challenges posed by modern young women, as domesticity, marriage, and proper behavior still permeated social expectations.

Tossounian's merit is to explain the nuances behind the experiences and representations of Argentine young women through the analysis of a wealth of sources, from advertisements to comic strips, tango lyrics, cinema, pulp fiction, and testimonies. The book is focused on the city of Buenos Aires, as it was the area of the country that experienced the greatest socioeconomic and cultural transformation. In that sense, it would be interesting to expand the analysis to other cities to explore particular regional and local dynamics and contexts. On the other hand, Tossounian provides excellent comparative perspectives with her attention to transnational circuits of circulation of ideas of modernity and consumption and references to other national cases.

The book also establishes a dialogue with the works by Matthew Karush, Natalia Milanesio, Daniel James, and Eduardo Elena, among others, on how popular culture, representations, and practices from the 1930s shaped Peronism later in the 1940s, a topic that Tossounian specifically addresses in the epilogue. In summary, the book's theoretical and empirical sophistication and clear writing style certainly makes it of interest to both scholars and the general public alike.