The global media present images of young women and values that are contradictory in nature. This article looks at the role of media in modernisation and images of young women in the Indian media in the post-liberalisation era. An analysis of some recent cases reveals that pressures to modernise are exacerbated by the global media's increasing tendency to portray young women in sexual ways. India's experience with the new media has thrown up some serious issues about eroticisation of the girl child and the invasion of privacy of young women which will make media regulation difficult in the light of policies that have loopholes to be plugged. The article argues that this reality will challenge India's National Policy for Empowerment of Women (2001), which aims to reshape social values and messages in the media and to use the mass media to portray images consistent with dignity of women.