From the very beginning of the anti-regime protests in Egypt in January 2011, there was a notion that one must ‘be a man’ to take part. The proliferation of terms such as ‘gada’a / جدع (a term that is difficult to translate into English, but roughly refers to characteristics that are associated with masculinity), dakkar / دكر (stud) and battal / بطل (hero) to describe protesters reflects how a particular imagination of gender roles was central to the uprising. As I will show, entrenched notions of gender and a reliance on popular culture as a reference point for revolutionary groups meant it was very difficult to break with existing forms of gender representation. This paper seeks to understand how men (and women) in Egypt sought to represent and imagine masculinity in a changing and turbulent political context. The revolution rarely, if ever, put forward a subversive or radically different representation of masculinity than what already existed. This is in contrast to feminist groups who were somewhat more successful in using popular national culture to maintain a degree of public visibility. The mythology of the revolution in song, imagery and film was quickly masculinised. The paper will also, therefore, explore how narratives of heroic masculinity were embedded in class-based depictions of chivalrous middle-class heroes and thuggish working-class men.