This journey into the lives of prep school students is an attempt to understand the pressures and consequences of prescribed gender ideals from their own perspectives and through their own words. The chapters of this book are organized around the symbolic opposition these adolescents create as they live, eat, study, and play among their peers and teachers at Bolton Academy. The class, ethnic, and individual differences in the performance of gender reveal how culture and development are interrelated and necessarily fused through the power of agency. This inside look at the everyday social interactions of these adolescents reveals how institutions and groups in power incorporate and perpetuate hierarchies and power structures, which in turn serve to form American character. This study attempts to demystify the highly-gendered and seemingly-incongruous nature of these adolescents' lives.