This article investigates how the Taiwanese edition of Cosmopolitan (1992-1997) may serve to resolve a tension felt by modern women in Taiwan by weaving global values and local values together into a tapestry of “modern womanhood” that can dwell within, and yet extend, the local culture. The article treats the magazine as a window into a Taiwanese image of the “modern woman” and as an arena in which there are Chinese and Western systems and values that could clash but, in fact, intermesh by virtue of the practice of exploiting Western means for Chinese ends. Taiwanese Cosmo shows how modernization need not mean Westernization, even if it relies on veneers of Western images, and it further aims to transform local Chinese values in a way that gives them global significance.
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