Week 3

This week continued to read Invisible Monsters. I read pages 245 to the end (297). This is how the book finished:

Brandy, her secret sister, and Manus continue there goose chase while stealing drugs from mansions. They end up at one house that is hosting a wedding the next day. The host, Mrs. Leonard Cottrell informs her guests that the house belongs to her daughter, Evie who will be married tomorrow. She then begins to drop a T.M.I. story of how is it a miracle that they could find a husband that wanted their poor Evie. Or should she say Evan. When her son Evan told her that he wanted to be a girl, Mr. and Mrs. Cottrell let him.
Mrs. Cottrell invited her drug-smuggles house seekers to her daughters wedding tomorrow. At the event, our main character gets a a whole new load of crazies put on her plate. Brandy has known all along that her jawless accomplice is her sister. She met Evie at a transexuals help meeting. Our main character still wants to kill the both of and once again, starts a fire. This time at the wedding. Evie blames Brandy and shoots her. The bullet hit a book in Brandy's jacket pocket. (Sound familiar?)
Brandy doesn't die and at the hospital, our main character, who we finally discover is named Shannon, tells her brother that she shot her own face off. I can't really explain why, so I will use a block quote:

"The truth is I was addicted to being beautiful, and that's not something you just walk away from. Being addicted to all that attention, I had to quit cold turkey. I could shave my head, but hair grows back. Even bald, I might still look too good. Bald, I might get even more attention. There was the option of getting fat or drinking out of control to ruin my looks, but I wanted to be ugly, and I wanted my health. Wrinkles and aging looked too far off. There had to be some way to get ugly in a flash. I had to deal with my looks in a fast permanent way or I'd always be tempted to go back.
I wanted to everyday reassurance of being mutilated. The way a crippled deformed birth-defected girl can drive her car with the windows open and not care how the wind makes her hair look, that's the kind of freedom I was after." (Note - why does she wear the veil then. Hidding would be the opposite of freedom.)

Shane informs his sister that the hairspray accident was not an accident and he did it for the same reason. He wanted something to make him different. Same with becoming a woman. Shane didn't actually want to Ms. Brandy Alexander. He thought because it was unwanted, sexual reassignment surgery would be the "ultimate form of self mutilation."
The story ends with out main character finally achieving what she wanted - a complete loss of narcissism. While Brandy/Shane is undergoing his/soon to be her surgery, she leaves him/her all documents needed to give her brother her identity. She shows that its possible for her after all that she's done to hurt others, to "completely and totally, permanently and without hope" love someone besides herself.

I believe that the theme of this book is meant to question beauty. With characters constantly changing names, sexes, appearances, orientations, locations, and types of drugs to take, the novel displays the ephemeral nature of beauty.
I would like to go back and focus on the scene in which Brandy first gives Shannon her veils. Because reading the quote about Shannon blowing her own jaw off intentionally for the "freedom" of being mutilated, has me confused on why she would then conceal this "freedom" with a mask. I think all characters in this book are confused in what beauty means and therfore don't know what to look for in there ever-changing journey to find it, or repel it.

Something interesting that I learned this week is that an old favorite song, "Time to Dance" by Panic! At the Disco is fully based off of Invisible Monsters. It makes a lot of sense to me now. The song focuses mostly on the wedding scene but uses styles that Palahniuk weaved into the novel. For example, "Give me envy, give malice, baby give me a break" is a line of the song. Palahniuk frequently used lines similar to this to explain the narrators current emotions as well as tie in her fashion model background. For example, "Give me romance. Flash. Give me denial. Flash" (pg. 69) is used when she is referring to her dysfunctional relationship with her boyfriend Manus. The author actually uses the lines "give me malice" (pg. 13) and "give me a break" (pg. 19) in the book as well.