By the turn of the twenty-first century, a new generation had emerged in Iran, one no longer burdened by the austerity of the long war with Iraq and comprising an increasingly younger demographic. Surreptitious satellite TV and the internet simultaneously flooded Iran with Western notions and imagery that impacted this youthful cohort. Perhaps nowhere were these transformations more visually conspicuous than in the altered appearance of young women, who pushed the boundaries of the country’s stringent moral and dress codes. And no artist captured this novel young Iranian woman better than the late Shirin Aliabadi. As someone who had lived and was educated outside of Iran, Aliabadi was uniquely positioned to appreciate and document this phenomenon. Staged as studio portraits, her subjects reveal a hybridity, neither of the East nor the West but wholly of Tehran and its evolving urban lifestyle. In her Miss Hybrid series, the models wear colorful headscarves daringly set back to reveal bleached hair, with eyes tinted blue by contact lenses, and their noses sporting surgical tape suggesting recent rhinoplasty. As here, blowing a giant pink bubble with her chewing gum; yet this seemingly innocent conduct, like her dress, is potentially provocative as public behavior.