Youth in Iran today have grown up with the constant presence of expatriate satellite television as well as the responses to it by the Islamic Republic’s media policy and programming. This paper investigates the reaction of youth to the global circulation of images about Iran and themselves. This paper begins with a description of the social worlds from which these youth come—and the shifting public/private boundaries they entail—and follows a large (25-30 member) long-running Tehran dowreh (discussion group). Based on over three years of participant observation and interviews with the group, this paper addresses the questions: how does this generation respond to the use of “Iranian youth” as a political symbol in conflicting representations of Iran constructed by the Islamic Republic, expatriate Iranian-Americans on satellite TV, and mainstream Western media? How do their own performances of identity reflect their negotiations of private and public spaces in Iran and their concerns with the global sphere? This paper examines how the youth in this group struggle against having to hide a private life and “faking” a public one, and their attempt to create an idealized version of a public sphere within the domestic realm.