This dissertation analyzes the construction of Cold War gender identity. While scholars like Alan Nadel and Elaine Tyler May have analyzed containment culture and how it constructs American culture, they have yet to connect that containment culture to hegemonic masculinity that is structured by the hegemonic Cold War superpowers. Furthermore, the way that containment culture functions is through the theme of collection, something that has yet to be fully explored. Reimagining containment through collection leads to a greater understanding of how containment is reified and how power is structured. This dissertation analyzes disparate texts from the Cold War period – ranging from literature to poetry to manga and even early video games – and traces the connection between the Cold War policy of containment, the collection that results from that containment, and the hegemonic masculinity that is paired with capitalism and Christianity to further patriarchal norms during this period of national insecurity. This dissertation uses the gender identity formulated by R.W. Connell and James Messerschmidt as a lens to analyze the themes and gender identities in Cold War texts. A better understanding and deconstruction of how patriarchy functions can lead to more effective methods of resistance and a more egalitarian norming of culture and society. What starts in literature and film is replicated in familiar packages in later cultural texts like manga and video games. A thread can be traced of Cold War hegemonic masculinities that make complicit other masculinities to collect and contain various forms of capital and to ultimately exercise patriarchal power: James Bond, Goku from Dragonball, James Clavell’s King, and Mario the plumber; these constructions of hegemonic masculinity resist containment through a lens of circularity. These all have their roots in the Cold War conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. More importantly, this dissertation may explain how these versions of gender identities are still constructed in the 21st century, and it may further resistance to hegemonic constructions of power by studying poets and authors like John Ashbery, Bob Kaufman, and Sylvia Plath.