Masculinity In Fight Club

Battle of the Genders

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines masculinity as having qualities appropriate to or usually associated with a man, and it also defines femininity as having the quality or nature of the female sex. So if you had to describe yourself using one of the words defined above, what word would you choose? Would you say you embody the definition of masculinity, or femininity? But what if you didn 't need to fit into the gender stereotypes put forward by society? What if you could just be you and not put a label on yourself? Today our society is made up of stereotypes, if you are a man you have to be the breadwinner and if you are a women you have stay at home and be a homemaker. The postmodern novels; Fight Club, City of Glass

Marla, she embodies more masculine characteristics than the narrator. When they first met, they were attending support groups, they were both there for their own gain, they were both faking. When the narrator tries to talk with her; “He confronts Marla with the problem. In the confrontation he realizes that Marla is stronger than him. He has it all planned out, he is going to tell her off, and she just takes it….She calls him on what he is doing. She walks away while he is still speaking. She completely dominates him in the scene” (StudyMode). Marla just brushes the narrator of like its nothing, almost like he doesn 't even exist. But as soon as Marla meets the narrator’s alpha-male personality, Tyler Durden, she is all over him and can barely leave him alone. “One evening, I hear Marla on the front porch…“I’m here to see Tyler. Tyler Durden. He lives here” (Palahniuk, 133). Marla didn 't even give the narrator a second chance because he wasn 't masculine enough for her but the second she met tyler she wanted to spend every waking moment with him, since he fit societies criteria of what a man has to

Bob from one of the many support groups the narrator attends is a symbol of what men have become. Bob used to own a gym and was a bodybuilder but he got testicular cancer and he had to have his testicles removed literally and figuratively because after that he forgot what it felt like to be a man. He grew boobs and he started crying. “For instance, the character Robert Paulsen, better known as "Bob," exemplifies the revolutionary body possible in fight club as well as the reinvention of the self. Bob was once a bodybuilder with a glorious physique before steroids, testicular cancer, and divorce left him alone, emasculated, and dying” (Burgess). However Bob didn 't die from cancer he died from trying to gain back his masculinity. “One minute, Robert Paulson was the warm center that the light of the world crowded around, and the next moment, Robert Paulson was an object. After the police shot, the amazing miracle of death” (Palahniuk, 177-178). Even though Bob regained his masculinity once he started attending fight club, he was trying to complete his assignment and died in the process he was forgotten because he was gone and his masculinity with him and society only wants you when you know who you are, and what you