As a child, Sher-Gil was encouraged by her uncle, Ervin Baktay, to carefully observe the reality around her and transfer it to her work.

Several commentators have seen the painting as reflecting Sher-Gil's divided identity: Indian, European, colonial subject, and female.

[2][3] There, she was influenced by her uncle, Ervin Baktay, who introduced her to Nagybánya artistic methods and plein air painting.

[10][11] The light skin woman, modelled by a friend, Denise Proutaux, is slouched, with her blonde hair partially covering a naked breast.

[13][14] One of Sher-Gil's tutors had compared her with Gustave Courbet, to which she responded to her cousin and later husband Victor, in a letter dated February 1933, that "I will be myself".

[15] That month also saw the vernissage of her Professional Model, a portrait of a nude consumptive that Sher-Gil felt was far superior to Young Girls.

[13] In her own account in a 1937 The Indian Ladies Magazine, Sher-Gil clarifies that the painting earned her the position of associate at the Salon and says that it "was declared Picture of the Year".

[14] In 1933 there were several pictures of the year at Paris; The Sphere newspaper (1933) included Miss Hermione and Mrs Claude Chauvin, both by Alfred Jonniaux, Le Rat by M. Philippe Ledoux, Vocation Précoce by Jane Chaueur-Ozeel, and La Convalescence by Madeleine Weill-Lestienne.

"[8] Art historian, Saloni Mathur, agrees with Vivan Sundaram that the painting is "complex", with the portrayal of "a brown and a white woman together in their nudity ambiguously, as possible lovers, or, in an alternative reading, as a form of self-portraiture that projected her own racially divided self".

[15] Art historian Susie Hodge, wrote in her book Artistic Circles (2021), that Young Girls reflects Sher-Gil's sexuality and the different aspects of her personality.

[23] A review in the Journal of International Women's Studies (2022) points to the significance of the contrasting postures of the girls; "while the French woman is casually careless and relaxed, Indira is sitting cross-legged, neat, and proper in her manner.