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Invisible Monster

In: Social Issues

Submitted By huha
Words 602
Pages 3
Invisible Monsters is a novel that tells about the beauty desires of a woman who lost her beauty after an unfortunate accident. Her jaw was injured and thus she was incapable of speech. This novel has a big relationship with our topics about gender, particularly, body image. After reading this novel, we can gain a deeper understanding about how bizarre appearance affects a person’s life, the extreme desire that people have to be beautiful, and how the story relates to modern society. In the novel Invisible Monsters, a woman, whose name was initially hidden, was shot while driving on the freeway. The shot made her lose her jaw. Becoming jawless was a quite shame for the girl because before the shot, she was a very beautiful fashion model. After the mishap, she immediately became a “monster”. The cover of the novel expresses the meaning of entire story by showing a picture of a girl without a mouth. When the book is turned it up side down, we see a picture of an old and ugly person. This image is further developed by a statement made by the disfigured woman (Shannon). “If I can’t be beautiful, I want to be invisible” (Palahniuk, 1999, 214), this quote was said by that disfigured woman and it expressed her desire of being beautiful as she was before. That woman preferred being invisible than being disfigured. In the novel, there is another main character beside the jawless woman who was Brandy Alexander. Brandy was friend of the disfigured woman and she used to do an operation to change her from being a woman to a man. Brandy helped the disfigured woman to be beautiful again although she just had a half of her face. “Beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power” (Palahniuk, 1999, 16) .This quote is the best example to express the power of beauty in the novel and the factors that made beauty became the thing that Brandy and the jawless woman most concerned about. For them, beauty was everything. From those examples above, we see that Invisible Monsters is similar with our society today in the way people think about beauty. Many people have tried many ways to make themselves more attractive and beautiful. “As individual self-esteem grows increasingly dependent on physical attractiveness, many Americans every year go to extreme measures to alter their looks through drugs, radical diets, or cosmetic surgery” (“Our Body Image: Is It a Serious Issue”, 59). Through out the Invisible Monsters novel, we see through the brother of the disfigured woman and Brandy Alexander. They were influenced by drugs and plastic surgery. Related to our modern world today, there are a small number of people who are not influenced by the ideas of “perfect appearance” because according to the “Do Thin Models Warps Girl’s Body Image” article, there are just 82% of people that are influenced the images of thin and beautiful models. Invisible Monsters made a great sense in connecting the story and what are happening in our societies today. Invisible Monster is an interesting novel that connects well with the ideas about beauty and the desires of having a good appearance and life. Compared to our society nowadays, there are many similarities. The novel is a very powerful message that tells about the obsession of women with perfect physical appearance and how plastic surgery helped them to change the ways they look. Chuck Palahniuk did a very nice job in telling the readers how a disfigured appearance affects a person and the desire of being beautiful.

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