The body beautiful and the beauty of nation : representing gender and modernity (Buenos Aires 1918-1939)

Abstract

This research focuses on the appearance of modern femininity in the mass media of Buenos Aires of the interwar period, showing the diverse range of meanings that the modern young woman phenomenon had in post-war Argentina. These diverse meanings were related to how male intellectuals, journalists, writers and filmmakers interpreted the changes in gender identities that characterised this period as well as their connection to the creation of a national identity for Argentina. In particular, by selecting images of modern femininities, I analyse how competing images of womanhood revealed anxieties associated with changing roles for women as well as how these images expressed the possibilities and dangers of modern life. I also study how different modern female figures reflected wider hopes, tensions and fears connected to the emergence of a modern nation and how these figures were both linked to and distinct from those that occurred elsewhere in the world. By focusing on key issues like consumption, mass culture, female fashion and sexuality, the broader scope of my inquiry is to study how the tensions and debates generated by modernity depended on and moulded gender notions in Buenos Aires.