Boys, responding to the ever-younger ages that girls enter puberty, have their plans to ramp up their masculinity, as described in this New York Times piece.
A Colby College professor has written a book on the topic, Packaging Boyhood.
If only the adolescent boys realized their true sexual deficits: Much later in life women are spurning them as unsuitable “marriageable mates” because their educational attainment falls short. Trying explaining that to a middle school-er.