ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the gender performances and gender display conveyed on YouTube by boys aged 12 to 17, who author videos to problematise their relationship with physical or relational intimacy. It examines the modalities of self-presentation as a boy on YouTube. The boys' narrations of relationships on YouTube focus more on their capacity to become sexually desirous and agentic than on their feelings. The boys problematise feelings through the prism of sexual desire. Teen videos offer a key to understanding the gender and sexuality socialisation process that is played out, in part, through the vector of the internet. The authors use all the standards of cross-dressing offered in the comedic world: speaking with a drawling, nasal voice and using affected gestures and inane facial expressions. Although YouTube offers a brand new platform for expressing gender identity in adolescence, there is no doubt that the masculinity performed there is deeply imprinted with a traditional form of heteronormativity.
