The media spotlight on masculinity has deepened across the last decade. Boys frequently feature as “future men” or sites of social intervention—against domestic, family, and sexual violence. Videos of boys behaving badly circulate as emblematic of “toxic masculinity”, a term that has increasingly featured in media debates about gender. Boys are often represented as a problem. Within this context, the complex lived experiences of boys have been largely ignored, the “boy” as subject operating as a pliable public figure in the cultural wars around gender. This chapter examines the cultural construction of “boys” in debates about gender, considering the implications of these discourses for understanding and addressing diverse lived experiences of boyhood.