Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters

There is a sort of offensiveness towards both men and women in Invisible Monsters. Laurie Vickroy says, "Palahniuk demystifies contemporary culture in hilarious descriptions of cosmetic surgery… His stories reveal the emptiness of a world that externalize desire so that people purchase objects or create images they think will fulfill it" (155). Shannon's feminine body is nothing but a commodity. Her brother does a trans-gender operation to deal with capitalism hegemony. Man and woman are nothing but commodities on the authority of consumer America. Shannon says, "You have to keep recycling yourself. Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I have ever known" (Palahniuk, "Invisible Monsters" 104). According to Invisible
Monsters, God is television. Brandy Alexander describes, "There is a different life on every channel, and almost every hour that lives change. It is the same those live video Web sites. You can watch the whole world without it knowing" (Palahniuk, "Invisible Monsters" 80). Palahniuk does not write Invisible Monsters for no purpose. Shannon's choice for a full face distortion is not in vain as well. She was able to mess her fitness as a skinny model. She was able to increase calories in her food and be as fat as a beached whale. Instead, she shoots herself! May be Palahniuk "… wants to take us to "nothing" as a means of overcoming our moral and intellectual apathy. One has to destroy in order to rebuild … The satisfactions we accrue by our meager means are not always great" (603).