Departing from a non-media centric and non-gender-centric perspective this chapter explores the role of media in the cultivation of gender identities among contemporary youth in Botswana. Drawing on data from a recent multi-methodological fieldwork I concentrate on essays written by village teenagers on the topic “My life 20 years from now”. The aim is to discuss the extent to which the representational resources used by the teenagers – within this genre of identity construction and in light of the wider fieldwork – can be traced to media or other sources. I find that Batswana teenagers make use of a diverse mix of gender-fluid, counter-stereotype and gender traditional representations and engage with identity constructions far beyond gender stereotypes. Many of these constructions can be directly linked to gender representations available in schools, families, and the local communities, yet less to media. This is partly due to low media access, and partly that media representations impact indirectly through other significant actors in their environments using media-inspired representations.