Masculinity In Lance Armstrong's Fight Club

“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever” (Lance Armstrong). Men have given up, making the pain prevalent and everlasting, causing feminine tendencies. The men in this respective novel don’t have any opposition standing in their way, to prove their masculinity. “We 're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War 's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives” (Chuck Palahniuk). Proving your masculinity used to not be a problem. It was simple to prove your manhood by various ways throughout time such as; hunting, joining the

The narrator is emasculated in many ways from; his addiction to consumer products, work life, spirit animal, and Tyler Durden. In the novel the Narrator is a consumerist and has the common issue of his things owning him. “The addictions and afflictions of the male characters in Fight Club are directly connected to the film 's interest and investment in the 'disenfranchising ' and 'emasculating ' effects of late capitalist consumer society on masculine identities” (Iocco, Melissa). His insomnia turns out to control his life, causing him to turn to the support group “Remaining Men Together” where he copes with these terminal victims. The Narrator is shown by Tyler Durden that his job is an emasculating factor that he does the same thing over and over again, and that his job sucks. “The men who participate are, apparently, attracted to Fight Club because it allows them to get away from the drudgery and repetition of work life, satisfying a desire to experience something ‘real’ ”(Iocco, Michelle). In the Narrator’s power trips he witnesses his spirit animal is a Penguin. His power animal states his weakness of masculinity, puny and harmless. His power animal explains the Narrator’s life before Tyler and Fight Club. Tyler Durden shows up and the narrator is still overshadowed by him, belittling him more and more through Marla Singer, because Marla is turned on

Through Fight Club they give up the emasculation for brutal beatings. These men turn to Fight Club to get away from their previous daily jobs and consumer lives, where they have been emasculated by middle america.

“Fight Club is a story about the delusions of professionals in the "New World Order". It is an extraordinary representation of the repressed rage of middle America, which has intensified since the loss of the Vietnam war. This social anxiety has been fuelled by a variety of social movements, including feminism and the civil rights movement, but is also involves confusion about post-Fordism and post-Keynesian economics, as well as frustration over the collapse of the American Dream”. (Ruddell, Caroline) In the Club men get the true sense of being a man. Fighting is a way of releasing testosterone and helps the men feel like men again like they are truly “alive”. Fight Club became helpful when the white male failed as a consumer and needed to be apart of something real. The only way to achieve it was through pain. The fighting in Fight Club can be seen as a way of showing men to take responsibility for their actions and not to blame it on