As Indonesia explored a new world of independence in the 1950s and 1960s, the question of how to be simultaneously Indonesian and “modern” fell largely on the nation’s women. A reading of the voices that emerged through women’s magazines therefore offers a highly nuanced understanding of the process of the development of Indonesian national identity during the Sukarno era. In particular, it suggests that ongoing incidents of moral crisis about what was “too much” modernity helps explain the dynamics of cultural tensions that exploded between different social and political groups in 1965.