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Masculinity In Fight Club

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Masculinity In Fight Club
This essay will explore how gender can be represented in Fight Club, it will go into depth on the comparison between femininity and masculinity and the constraints that come with it. It will also consider the specific traits that are established with each gender and how our characters mask them.

Males used to have a clearly defined role as ‘hunter / provider’ but in modern society are not sure of their status or how they should behave. In Fight Club the men the narrator meets at the “Remaining Men Together” support group are a representation of cultural loss of masculinity. Bob is a former fitness guru who has, literally, lost his testicles and in their place developed “bitch-tits”. The narrator feels emasculated because of his consumer driven …show more content…
The fact she is a women makes her seem particularly desperate and pitiful. Very few other women are even seen. We briefly see, and laugh at, a shop buyer who fawns over a manipulative Tyler as he cooly sells her soap. Tyler is selling women “their fat asses back to themselves”, making women an object of ridicule. A female TV reporter, judged as “hot” as she is unable to comprehend the actions of Project Mayhem as a smiley face blazes from a building symbolising the men fighting back. Tyler humiliates Marla, rages against women, and attributes the emasculation the men in fight club feel in their lives to the fact that they are “a generation of men raised by women”.

In Fight Club a ‘real’ man rejects femininity, consumerism, social rules, and women unless they’re used as sexual objects. Instead violent aggression, sadism and masochism are seen as ways to liberate males from emasculation and be a ‘real man’. Tyler is the ideal male; men want to be him and women want to be with him. However, as the narrative develops Tyler’s philosophy and desire to destroy society is seen as dangerous; as we question this does mean that his gender politics are also unsound?

Marla &
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