Week 9

I really enjoyed reading the end of "Invisible Monsters," it really makes your perceptions on gender and sexuality all twisted.  This book makes you question why some people do the things they do, whether it be for their own personal gain, others gain, attention, being secluded, etc.  This relates to our class topic, the outsider.  How does one become an outsider? Does one chose to be an outsider, or does society make them an outsider?  In this book our main character, Shannon, deliberately makes herself an outsider.  She was sick of being addicted to beauty, she needed to find a way out.  She didn't want to get fat and she didn't want to start drinking a lot to become ugly.  She needed an immediate way to become ugly so she shot herself in the face as we all know.  Shane on the other hand may have had different means of becoming an outsider.

It seemed like in Shannon and Shane's child hood, Shane was always the secluded one, the outsider, but Shannon seems to disagree.  Shannon thinks she was being ignored by her parents, but their parents hated Shane because he was homosexual, and they kicked him out of the house.  After this Shane wanted love and affection, he wanted people to pay attention to him, he was sick of being shunned.  His surgery was truly to be like Shannon, to be a more beautiful version of Shannon.  He becomes Brandy Alexander, but we don't learn she is Shane till the end of the book.  Shane claims he wanted to be a woman because it is a new adventure, it is a new discovery waiting to happen.  He tried blowing his face off when he was little to do the same thing.

Getting back to the end of the book, I really enjoyed the shock factor that came along with Shannon telling us she shot herself in the face, not Evie and not Manus.  I would've never seen that coming.  Along with that Brandy tells us that she knew it was Shannon all along, that Evie had told her about the "accident."  Why would you shoot yourself in the face though to escape beauty?  Why would you have a sex change operation for new discoveries, and attention.  The author really makes you question the characters sexuality along with peoples sexuality in real life.  Who's to say a man is a man, and who's to say a woman is a woman, they can have opposing traits.  Shannon gives Shane her identity and everything that goes along with it at the end of the book, just so he can be happy and she can be invisible and alone like she seems to want.  But one last question I have about the book would be do their parents actually think that Shane died of aids?  I'll leave it at that.