Contrary to the conventional wisdom that the working poor and the lower-class youth as passive subjects of ideology were foot soldiers of the Islamic Republic of Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, I argue that a great deal of the working-class men and youths using different tactics were looking for ways to survive during the wartime. This essay illustrates a paradoxical situation in which the working-class youth and migrant workers, marginalized in big cities, were struggling to meet two different gender expressions and expectations in wartime Iran in the 1980s. On the one side, excluding other forms of masculinities, the ideological state apparatuses imposed hegemonic masculinity upon men to unify them around the Revolution’s ideals and mobilize men and the youth for the war. On the other side, the banal reality of everyday life and the dire economic situation, particularly among working-class families, demanded men to play their crucial role as father and breadwinner. My aim is to offer a retrospective consideration of how a set of elements crystallized into a vision of masculinity as dominant hegemonic masculinity and how men found ways to meet both hegemonic gender expectations and mundane gender expectations. First, analyzing cultural products such as textbooks, booklets, posters, songs, and video footages, I will illustrate how the ideological state apparatuses represented a specific image of the ideal man and masculinized public space. The long Iran-Iraq war, which broke out soon after the 1979 Revolution, gave rise to a more ideological climate in which the revolutionary state gained monopoly control of public images and signs. In the absence of other forms of images, the state produced its own cultural products, as articulations of ideological discourse, by which it constructed a hegemonic form of masculinity to identify the indicators of ideal men devoted their lives to the Revolution and ready for self-sacrifice. The significant aspects of these products were gender- and class-oriented that subjected young men from working-class families. Second, listening to men from working-class families, I will argue that, despite the domination of hegemonic masculinity, a great deal of the working-class men and youths used different tactics in everyday life to survive and fulfill their gender roles as father and breadwinner.